


Nothing In The Sky Above Me (Nothing Strung Below Us, Baby, If We Fall)

by IndigoNight



Series: I Know That I Miss You [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Amnesia, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kidnapping, M/M, Panic Attacks, Polyamory, Recurring Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 17:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 35,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12370731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndigoNight/pseuds/IndigoNight
Summary: Bucky wakes up wet, bloody, and in pain. He doesn’t know where he is, or why he’s there. All he knows is that there’s a picture of a stranger in Steve’s sketchbook and a cryptic message to save the man. Bucky doesn’t know what’s happening, but he knows that he’ll do whatever it takes to find that beautiful goateed man and kiss his stupid face.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Woo! It's finally posting day! 
> 
> A huge thanks to the WinterIron Big Bang mods for hosting and organizing this event. It has been a real blast.
> 
> Massive adoring unending thanks to both of my amazing artists, [River](https://riverlander974.tumblr.com/) and [Eriot](http://latelierderiot.tumblr.com/). They both made some really amazing art for this fic and you should definitely go check out all of their art. Direct links to River's art can be found [here](https://riverlander974.tumblr.com/post/166427623332/nothing-in-the-sky-above-me-nothing-strung-below) and [here](https://riverlander974.tumblr.com/post/166427625352/nothing-in-the-sky-above-me-nothing-strung-below)! And direct link to Eriot's art [here](http://latelierderiot.tumblr.com/post/166427698562/this-is-the-second-bang-i-signed-for-go-read-it)! Be sure to give them both some love!
> 
> Thanks to [marsmaywander](http://marsmaywander.tumblr.com) for the beta'ing help. I really appreciate you putting up with all of my nonsense XD.
> 
> Last but not least, thanks as always to the WONDERFUL and endlessly patient [BuckytheDucky](http://archiveofourown.org/users/BuckytheDucky/pseuds/BuckytheDucky) and [critter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jsaer/pseuds/afearsomecritter) for being such great friends and cheerleaders and listening to me ramble about all of my dumb story ideas.
> 
> This is a sequel to my previous fic [Like Running Water Slipping Through My Fingers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7872649/chapters/17979574), however, you should be able to read this fic alone without getting confused. The title of the fic is taken from the Delta Rae song Scared. Enjoy!

*****

Prologue

*****

Bucky is not in his bed.

There are no pillows, no blankets. A total absence of Steve’s freezing toes and wheezing-snores invading his space. But he is wet, and in pain. His entire left side feels like it’s on fire, the taste of blood is thick in his mouth, and his head is a sustained, throbbing ache.

Whatever he’s laying on is hard. An alley probably. Steve. He must have followed Steve into another back alley fight.

Everything feels distant and hazy. Even once he forces his eyes open he can’t seem to process what he’s seeing.

It’s not an alley.

It’s not New York.

There’s torrential downpour of rain outside of the strange concrete tube he’s slumped in; his ass is soaking in a puddle two inches deep. The rain is turning the landscape outside of the tube into a blur that echoes the unfocused haze of his mind.

Nothing makes sense.

Where is he?

How did he get here?

Where is Steve?

He should be panicking. There’s a twisting, dizzying nausea in his guts and his head is pounding in time with his heart beat. It’s cold. Cold down to his bones and the throbbing pain in his left side is overwhelming. He tries to check himself distractedly, but his body feels so stiff and distant, and it’s hard to find his skin under his soaked clothes.

There’s a gun in his hand, and blood smeared across his fingers. Is the blood his? He can’t tell. His clothes are some kind of stiff leather and there’s an almost impossible number of weapons strapped to his body. It’s the strangest gun he’s ever seen, and yet he knows how to eject the magazine and check the ammo without thinking; the clip is full, no shots fired.

A sound that’s almost a scream escapes his lips when he realizes, abruptly, that he’s not alone.

On instinct he scrambles away, his hands splashing in the water and scraping on the concrete as he crab-crawls backwards and as soon as his back hits the far wall his hands clamp over his mouth automatically to prevent any further sounds from escaping. His heart is pounding so hard he thinks his ribs are going to break.

There is another person in the tube. The person is slumped over, legs sprawled across the entire width of the cramped space. He - presumably - is wearing some kind of full body armor and Bucky can’t see his face behind a smooth metal faceplate. The person hasn’t moved. No skin is visible so it’s impossible to be sure, but it doesn’t look like he’s breathing. The armor is scratched and dented, the side of the helmet partially crumpled inward. There’s blood smeared across the chestplate.

Bucky’s pretty sure that whoever is in that armor, he isn’t alive any more.

Bucky knows, instinctively and insistently, that he can’t stay here. Wherever here is, whatever is going on, it isn’t safe and he has to move. But which way? Through one end of the tunnel is the distant shape of a wall and nondescript buildings, and the other end is a black blur that might be a road.

He needs more information.

He has to take several steadying breaths before he can move. He finds an empty holster to put the gun in his hand away without actually looking. He tries to ignore the way his right hand shakes as he edges carefully toward the motionless body across from him. Every muscle in his body is taut as a bowstring, his eyes glued to the figure watching for any flicker of movement. There’s nothing, not even when he reaches out with one metal finger to poke the strange circle set into the center of the chestplate.

Then he notices the book. It’s a small thing, with a soft moleskin cover, saved from the water by virtue of being tucked into the crook of the armored arm against the body’s side. Carefully, fully expecting the body to lurch forward and grab him at any moment, he pries the book loose and retreats back to the far side of the tunnel with it.

It’s a sketchbook.

It’s _Steve’s_ sketchbook. He knows it instantly, even though Steve’s never been able to afford paper of such good quality. Every line of that book belongs to Steve, half finished cityscapes that are definitely New York, detailed sketches of gears, silly anthropomorphic cartoon animals. Bucky drinks in each image, traces his fingers distractedly over the rough lines and something in the back of his brain itches.

Something important.

Something he’s missing.

Then he finds it. There are figures throughout the book, some full realistic portraits, some quick sketches or cartoons. Men and women laughing and dancing, cooking and fighting and reading. There are several of them, but the same eight or so people appear over and over again. Bucky himself appears about every third page, which is both embarrassing and gratifying.

Bucky stops on the last drawing in the book - the last third or so is still blank. But this page-

Bucky’s heart skips three beats and then doubles in pace.

It’s a simple drawing. A half finished portrait. The lines are still rough, bits of eraser shavings trapped in the binding. The man in the portrait has appeared several times in the book before, usually either surrounded by machines or asleep in a mound of pillows. But this portrait is different. In this portrait the man is looking forward, his hair sticking up at odd angles, his shoulders half covered by an undershirt though his torso fades out where the picture isn’t done. The graphite lines are thick and dark where they shape the broad curve of his shoulders and the neat lines of a goatee. The only color in the picture is a luminous blue circle in the center of his chest that Bucky stares at distractedly for an excessive amount of time.

Irrationally, Bucky thinks he might scream. There’s too much uncertainty, too much he doesn’t know, too much he’s missing. He can’t contain it. Can’t breathe around it.

On the opposite facing page from the portrait are two words smeared in what Bucky recognizes as his own handwriting; shaky, uneven letters written not with a pencil or pen, but with a finger. In blood.

_Save him_

Beautiful art by River ([tumblr / ](https://riverlander974.tumblr.com)[AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riverlander974)) You can see the original art post [here](https://riverlander974.tumblr.com/post/166427623332/nothing-in-the-sky-above-me-nothing-strung-below)


	2. Chapter 1

*****

_72 hours earlier…_

*****

“I can’t believe you called that food,” Bucky grumbles.

“That was the most highly rated restaurant in New York.” Tony’s voice is full of put-upon offense, but he smiles at the street cart guy and shoves a properly greasy burger into Bucky’s hands. “Quit whining.”

“They served us foam!” Bucky compensates for the way the massive bite of burger muffles his voice but raising it to near shouting volume. “It was just a whole plate of foam, with like two leaves on top - leaves that you weren’t even supposed to eat. You cannot tell me that future people actually call that food.”

“You and Barton ate three cans of spray cheese yesterday,” Tony points out, but he’s grinning and watching Bucky eat rather than paying any attention to where he’s walking.

“That’s not foam,” Bucky protests.

“It’s not cheese either.”

Bucky probably would have conceded the point, but instead he has to clamp the remains of his burger between his teeth and pull Tony to the side so that he doesn’t run face first into a lamp post. The force of Bucky’s pull causes Tony to stumble and half fall against Bucky’s chest, which Tony doesn’t seem to mind because he takes the opportunity to grope Bucky’s ass before pulling away.

For a second, just a second, Bucky’s stomach drops and he has to look around to see if anyone noticed where Tony’s hand went, but no one on the street is so much as giving them a second glance. He tries to cover it by plucking a second burger from Tony’s hand. Tony relinquishes the burger, but he doesn’t move away, continuing to walk a little too close to Bucky as they make their way down the street.

They walk in silence for several minutes while they both finish their burgers, and Bucky has a distant sense of not being uncomfortable, but feeling like maybe he should be. It’s not just that he’s out in public on a date with a guy, but there’s also the fact that, as far as his memory goes, he only met Tony yesterday. Except he loves Tony. He loves Tony in a way that’s somehow both fresh-new-nervous-butterflies and exasperated-fond-comfortable-familiarity at the same time, which shouldn’t be possible but here they are. It’s overwhelmingly bizarre sometimes - the idea that he’s lost seventy years of his life, has barely aged in that time thanks to being dosed up with super powers, and has somehow ended up with a life in the future that allows him to have _two_ boyfriends even though he doesn’t always remember one of them - but it’s also fucking fantastic.

The Tower is coming into view ahead of them. Bucky’s eager to get back, to hopefully join up with Steve and indulge in all of the pleasures a fancy future home with his two best guys has to offer, but he’s also enjoying the fresh evening air and Tony’s easy company. Suddenly, Tony tosses his burger wrapper into the nearest trash can and grabs Bucky’s hand, pulling him down a cross road.

“Where are we going?” Bucky demands, though he follows Tony willingly enough. “I thought we were done-”

“I want dessert,” Tony declares, grinning.

“We had cheesecake flavored foam back at the restaurant-” He protests, albeit half heartedly.

“There’s this little bakery a few blocks down, sells the best pies in the whole city,” Tony insists. “We can pick up a couple and take them back to Captain Workaholic and maybe he’ll let us eat them off of his abs.”

“Says the guy who supposedly spends up to four days at a time without coming out of his lab,” Bucky grumbles, instinctively defensive of Steve even though there’s no real insult to protest and the idea of eating pie off of Steve’s abs is _definitely_ one Bucky can get on board with. He has a sneaking suspicion that Steve’s excuse that he couldn’t come with them to dinner because he needed to do some paperwork was mostly bullshit, but he’s decided that he doesn’t actually mind. He loves Steve, and he loves _being with_ Steve, but it’s nice - and probably planned - to be able to spend some time alone with Tony. Especially since Tony had, in fact, spent most of Bucky’s current memory cycle sequestered in his lab.

He’s so distracted thinking about Tony, and Steve, and Steve’s abs, that it takes him a full block to realize that Tony still hasn’t let go of his hand. It makes his stomach flip uncomfortably, but there’s also a bubble of warmth filling his chest and no one is paying attention to them-

“Are you okay?” Tony asks. He’s still grinning, loose and casual but Bucky knows his eyes are serious behind his ridiculous, unnecessary sunglasses and he’s already started to loosen his grip on Bucky’s hand.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. He doesn’t have to take time to consider it because the moment Tony starts to pull away his own hand tightens around Tony’s and he can’t resist the urge to pull Tony closer. It’s so strange, to walk down the street openly hand in hand with a man - something he’d never been able to do with Steve before - but it’s thrilling and surprisingly comfortable. The thirty-six hours that Bucky remembers spending in this new future has been in many ways dizzying, but, despite the lack of flying cars, Bucky can’t say he’s disappointed.

It’s nice. Tony is a line of warmth just barely brushing Bucky’s shoulder and his hand is firm and calloused, his grip strong around Bucky’s hand. Bucky’s never really thought of himself as having a type - Tony and Steve definitely feel like opposite sides of a coin in a lot of ways. But, then again, Bucky’s seen Tony’s lab, and Tony is just as much of an artist as Steve is - just with machines instead of charcoal - and Bucky kind of loves feeling the evidence of that carved into the rough edges of Tony’s fingers.

They walk in easy stride, Tony talking about dinner and the buildings they’re walking past, commenting on the traffic and other people on the street; Tony treats talking like a hobby, and doesn’t seem to care that Bucky doesn’t understand everything he says. Maybe in the past, Bucky would have found it embarrassing to be so out of the loop, but there’s something magnetic about Tony, about the crooked tilt of his smile and the coiled energy contained in every wiry line of Tony’s body; it’s distracting, and dizzying, and thrilling all at once.

Ahead of them, the sidewalk widens into a plaza lined with boutique shops and umbrella covered tables scattered around across the expanse of smooth pavement and raised cement flower beds. It’s late in the evening, and most of the boutiques are long since closed, the umbrellas snapped shut leaving the metal tables exposed for the night. But the overwhelmingly dominant feature of the plaza is the massive bronze cast statue that takes up the center.

“What the hell is that?” Bucky demands as he eyes the statue.

Tony’s smirk looks like it’s going to break his face in half and there’s instantly no doubt in Bucky’s mind that this was planned.

The statue is easily fifteen feet tall, six figures standing in clichély heroic poses grouped in a loose circle on top of an ornate base with bas-relief aliens sculpted into it. It’s hideous and Bucky instantly loves it.

“Does Steve know about this?” he asks, winding his way through the raised flowerbeds to stand in front of the twelve foot tall statue that is apparently supposed to be Steve; it’s wearing a bronze approximation of the Captain America suit and lifting the shield as though about to smash some bad guys with it. “He hates it, doesn’t he? Why is his head so small?”

Tony has his hands sunk deep into the pockets of his slacks and he’s taken off his sunglasses to smirk up at the statue. “I made him come to the dedication ceremony,” Tony says. It should sound like a confession, but comes out gleeful and much more like a boast. “Pretty sure his face invented three new shades of red.”

“Fuck, this is the best, most hideous thing I’ve ever seen.” Bucky means it absolutely. He knows about the Chitauri invasion. There’s video footage and official SHIELD files and endless news stories about it; even though it happened years ago now the city is still recovering and it’s almost impossible _not_ to find out about it. Steve, apparently, finds the attention and popularity his dramatic return from the dead won him deeply embarrassing; Bucky finds it hilarious.

The rest of the statue is no less hilariously disproportionate; the arms on the Hawkeye statue are bigger around than his head, Black Widow is twisted into an impossible angle that in real life would break even her unusually flexible back, and Thor is wearing the most ridiculous helmet with some kind of wings sticking out from the sides that are as big as the rest of his head.

“Yeah, they put it up before I finished trademarking our images,” Tony sighs. He looks a little rueful about it, but Bucky can’t help noticing that the Iron Man figure is less misshapen than the rest of them and there’s a light of mischief in Tony’s eyes. “Here, come here. I’ll show you the best view.” Tony holds out his hand and Bucky doesn’t even think twice before taking it.

Tony climbs up onto the base of the statue, easily ducking his way in between the Hulk’s legs and pulling Bucky along behind him. Bucky can’t help a reflexive glance around, but there’s no one else in the plaza, and he figures Stark probably somehow owns the statue anyway, so he follows Tony. The center of the platform, inside of the ring of statues, is flat and smooth, sheltered by the cluster of legs and defeated aliens around the outside. It also provides an very good view of the surprisingly detailed butts of the six Avengers.

Bucky snorts, dropping down to sit on the smooth metal beside Tony. “What are you, twelve?” he teases, craning his neck back and tilting his head to consider the model of Steve’s ass now five feet above his head.

“Does this make up for the foam?” Tony asks, purposefully knocking his shoulder against Bucky’s with a teasing grin.

Bucky rolls his eyes, but nudges Tony back. “The burgers made up for the foam. This is overkill.”

Tony opens his mouth, no doubt about to begin on a self-congratulatory tirade, but Bucky preempts him by pulling him in for a kiss. It’s sweet, but short and chaste because even sheltered from immediate view as they are Bucky is still keenly aware of the fact that they’re in public. They somehow end up sitting cross legged and facing each other, knees knocking together like kids hiding in a blanket fort, the statues around them cutting the light from the streetlamps and casting their little nook in uneven bars of light and shadow. The smirk on Tony’s face has faded away, but in its wake is something softer, something much more real and an abrupt ache flashes through Bucky’s chest, puncturing the bubble of warmth that had been pushing against the insides of his ribs. It hits him, suddenly, like a punch to the nose, that while this is _his_ first date with Tony, _Tony_ has been dating him for over a year now.

“So, how often do you do this?” Bucky asks before he can stop himself, before he can keep his mouth from exposing the now hollow knot that’s suddenly filling the pit of his stomach and ruining the moment for both of them. Tony pauses, raising a questioning eyebrow at him and Bucky sighs. “You know… woo me?” he clarifies, already regretting speaking.

“Everyday. Constantly. I never stop wooing,” Tony answers immediately, and it should be funny, because Tony is ridiculous. But something feels wrong now about the little crinkles of amusement around his eyes, something a little too serious behind his joke, and he’s resting a hand on Bucky’s knee like he thinks Bucky might disappear. “I am the world’s most hopeless romantic, just ask Steve-”

“Tony,” Bucky cuts in insistently, barely resisting the urge to roll his eyes. “I’m being serious. Doesn’t it, you know, bother you?”

It bothers Bucky, suddenly - or maybe not so suddenly, maybe it usually bothers him and that’s just another thing that’s he’s forgotten until now. There are hours of video footage, stored up in the - goddamn _sentient_ \- supercomputer that Tony built, documenting the last year of Bucky’s life. Steve and Tony, and the computer JARVIS, and the rest of their weird little family group that lives in Avengers Tower, collect and curate parts of his life for him, preserving them and making them available for him to watch whenever he wants. It’s his introduction to this world, to his life, how he found out where and _when_ he was when he woke up confused and alone in a stranger’s bed thirty-six hours ago. He hadn’t even had time to start freaking out before a video started playing on the wall in front of him, a recording of Steve welcoming him to the future, a highlights reel of the life that he gets to have even though he doesn’t remember it. Recorded-Steve had explained his ‘condition’ - that’s how Steve had described it, careful and gentle even though Steve himself used to get so pissed off at anyone who talked about his health issues like that - that somewhere along the line Bucky’s brain was damaged. That roughly every three to four days - not quite like clockwork, but inevitable all the same - he forgets all over again. At the time, it had been weird but interesting, almost exciting. Steve had been there as soon as the video ended, a little cautious, like he wasn’t sure of Bucky’s reaction, but normal and familiar and that was all Bucky needed to embrace this weird, crazy future.

Except now it’s hitting him, really truly hitting him, that he isn’t actually _new_ to the twenty-first century. That Steve, and Tony, and all the others have done this before - many, many times before. And it hurts, a sharp startling pain, because Bucky is going to forget again. It could be tomorrow, or maybe the day after that, but Bucky is going to forget - he’ll forget the past two days, forget this night, this date, forget _Tony_ \- and have to start all over again. And so will Tony.

Tony doesn’t exactly deflate, but he stops gesticulating. “No,” he says, and Bucky doesn’t need to divine any microexpressions that he’s never seen before but are familiar to him anyway to know that Tony is lying.

“I mean, I get Steve,” Bucky persists before Tony can drag them off on some other distracting tangent - because he doesn’t <i>want</i> to have this conversation, but now that he’s started he can’t stop. It’s probably not something they’re supposed to talk about; he should tell JARVIS to put a note in his memory video not to bring it up again. “He’s always been too stubborn to know what’s good for him, and at least he doesn’t have to start over entirely. But you…” He stops and bites his lip. He feels stupid, his words fumbling and awkward; he’s always been pretty good at wooing himself, when he set his mind to it, but the serious stuff is so much harder.

“Yeah, okay,” Tony admits with a sigh. “Maybe a little.” He still has one hand on Bucky’s knee, but the rest of him momentarily half turns away like some sort of deflection. He scrapes his thumbnail distractedly over the metal shaping Captain America’s boot beside them, but after only a few seconds he looks back up and meets Bucky’s eyes in a way that isn’t just forthright but holds weight to it. “But it’s worth it.”

Bucky snorts. “I know I’m a catch, but-” Tony is still looking at him, and it’s probably the most serious Bucky has ever seen him - at least in the two days Bucky can remember - and the half-joking protest dies in his throat. “Why?”

Tony goes back to picking at the metal, and Bucky almost thinks he isn’t going to answer until he does. “You smile at me,” he says.

“Lots of people-”

“Not the same,” Tony cuts in a little too quick, a little too harsh, but then his voice evens out again immediately. Tony can’t seem to hold Bucky’s gaze and he alternates between looking at the piece of metal his fingers are picking at and up at the circle of sky visible above them. “Sometimes, you wake up, and you have no idea who I am,” he tells the stars slowly, and Bucky is almost gratified that Tony’s voice is just as awkward and halting as his own. “And I’ll be… a mess, you know? Just off of a four day work-bender in the lab, grease everywhere, probably bleeding in a couple of places, no shower. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m always charming, but it’s a far cry from the ravishing creature currently seated before you.”

“A little more like the ravishing creature from about two hours before we left the Tower?” Bucky points out with a smirk.

“Something like that, yeah.” Tony’s glower is halfhearted at best, and drops quickly back into seriousness. “But you still look at me, and you smile. A little bit like you’re smiling at me right now, actually.”

Bucky tries to scowl but the bubble of warmth is building again and his lips refuse to reverse their current position even though his cheeks are starting to hurt a little. “So, like a dope?”

“I believe that is the technical term, yes.” In fairness, Tony is looking a little dopey too, the showman’s smirk gone and replaced by a small smile that reaches all the way into his eyes. Bucky gives in to the urge to lean in, closing the scant inches between them and press a chaste kiss to Tony’s lips. When he starts to pull back Tony catches him with one broad hand cupped around the back of his neck. He holds Bucky there, where they can breathe each other’s air and it’s almost too close to actually meet each other’s eyes. “It’s worth it,” Tony repeats quietly, like a secret in the warm air between them.

It doesn’t change anything, doesn’t _fix_ anything. But Bucky decides it’s enough, for now. That he can let himself believe Tony, for now. That right now, in this moment, he can touch Tony, and kiss him, and feel something real and honest and beautiful even if it doesn’t make sense.

And then there’s a lot of kissing. It very quickly stops being chaste, and just as quickly stops being gentle. Bucky stops thinking about being seen and he almost forgets the - now much smaller but still present - knot of guilt and uncertainty niggling in the pit of his stomach. Tony’s breath holds traces of burger grease and whiskey and his hands make their way down from cupping Bucky’s head to snaking their way under the hem of his shirt. It’s dizzying, how easily they fit together, how good it feels to have Tony pressed up against him.

Tony shifts, his hand hooked in Bucky’s shirt as though he’s trying to drag Bucky on top of him. Except that there isn’t room and Bucky just narrowly avoids kneeing Tony in the crotch and Tony’s head bangs against statue-Hawkeye’s boot. Tony doesn’t seem fazed, persistently trying to suck a bruise onto Bucky’s neck but it’s enough to pull Bucky back into reality.

“Tony, no,” he protests, though it is admittedly reluctant. He can’t help but laugh as Tony whines in protest when he pulls way. He feels too light, almost drunk; his stomach is full, the air is warm, and Tony smells unbelievably good. “Stop it.”

“Tony yes,” Tony grumbles, his hands finding their way beneath Bucky’s belt to squeeze his ass hard enough to make him jump a little.

Bucky laughs and rolls his eyes, but manages to extricate himself from Tony’s grasp just enough to fend him off. “Much as I’d love to, we can’t do this here. Remember the pies and Steve’s abs? Let’s go do that. It’ll be better.”

Tony whines and grumbles by lets Bucky drag him back out between the Hulk’s legs to the street. He doesn’t completely stop trying to grope Bucky though, and their descent from the base of the statue to the sidewalk is less than graceful.

Something makes Bucky stop. The hairs on the back of his neck prickle and the metal arm attached to his left shoulder makes a low whirring sound like it’s powering up.

Instinctively he pushes Tony back toward the statue, putting his own body in front of Tony’s as he looks wildly around the plaza. There are three large, black SUVs with tinted windows parked on the pavement. There are black clad figures spread out in a loose circle around them.

Then everything happens too fast. One of the figures pulls a gun and fires. Bucky ducks, dragging Tony down with him and the bullet lodges in The Hulk’s bronze knee. And before Bucky can recover the figures are on them. Bucky moves automatically, without thinking, without knowing how or what he’s doing. He throws a right hook that makes the closest goon stumble back into the guy behind him. Two more guys somehow get behind him, each grabbing one of his arms and one of them presses something - a taser? - to the vulnerable joint between his neck and shoulder. The pain is searing, short circuiting his brain and making his whole body spasm.

He comes back to himself as his knees hit the ground. Distantly he sees four guys surrounding Tony. Tony is swearing and throwing punches, but there are too many of them and one manages to get a thick black bag over Tony’s head. Bucky stumbles to his feet, but something too big and too heavy to be a fist slams into his stomach and forces him to double over again. Immediately after, something hits the underside of his chin, knocking his head back and driving his teeth through the tip of his tongue.

He doesn’t stop fighting. Even when blood and sweat blur his vision he keeps throwing punches and kicks on blind instinct. He connects more often than he doesn’t and he hears the thuds of bodies hitting the ground but the tide of goons doesn’t end. He can’t see Tony any more and someone hits him with a taser again as the engines in the SUVs roar to life. The men around him are talking, shouting orders and swearing.

Something hard connects with the back of Bucky’s head and his face slams into the concrete before he can catch himself. Through the pain and confusion panic is brewing, a horrifying recursive loop of _Tony. They have Tony_ filling his brain.

Without thinking, without acknowledging the fact that his whole body feels like it’s falling to pieces, Bucky pushes himself up. He makes himself move, makes himself run. He can just see the goons piling into the SUVs. He thinks he sees Tony’s shirt - it’s a nice red silk one that Steve had picked out before they left - between the black clad figures as he’s pushed into the back of one of the cars.

Bucky might be screaming.

He’s running, his fancy shoes pounding against the pavement of the plaza. He leaps over the raised flowerbeds rather than go around them, pelting headlong, heedless.

But it’s too late. He’s too slow. By the time he reaches the road the SUVs are long out of sight.

Bucky stands there, bleeding and breathless, staring out at the strange street in the city he doesn’t know any more. It feels like something has been ripped out of his chest, leaving him raw and hollowed out. And alone, so fucking alone.

Beautiful art done by [Eriot](http://latelierderiot.tumblr.com) You can see the original art post [here](http://latelierderiot.tumblr.com/post/166427698562/this-is-the-second-bang-i-signed-for-go-read-it)


	3. Chapter 2

Steve has been staring at the screen for so long that he can’t make his eyes focus on it any more. It’s been just under fifty-five hours since Tony was taken, and Steve’s so tired he can’t even feel panicked any more.

The main conference room has been converted into mission control, crowded with holographic screens and reams of papers, data reports, and photographs. The team filters in and out, pouring over documents, coming in and out from checking out potential leads, and burying themselves in the biggest coffee mugs the Tower has to offer. They’re all exhausted and stress levels are rising higher and higher. Sometime around the thirty-second hour there’d been an incident with Clint’s bow and a bowl of soup, and Bruce had recused himself to work privately from his own lab. Thor and Sam have been switching off on flying over the city, hoping against hope that they’ll see  _ something _ , and Clint and Natasha have been alternating between calling in favors with their various contacts and, with Pepper’s help, digging through all of the communications sent to Tony in the past two weeks in case anything from the usual pile of threats stick out as more than just blowing steam.

They have next to nothing. Bucky had given them his best account of what happened, but that wasn’t much; men in nondescript black clothing - trained fighters, maybe former military - similarly nondescript black SUVs, and only half of one license plate. After sixteen hours of digging through traffic camera footage, Bucky had abruptly snapped up and declared, “Russian! They were speaking Russian!” He’d apparently understood what the men were saying - nothing helpful, just orders to keep Tony alive, to get Tony in the van, to get out, leave Bucky behind - without processing that it wasn’t English. 

After fifty hours of useless searching, Bucky had started to fall asleep on his keyboard and Sam had hustled him onto a couch in the lounge next door. A few of the others have ducked out for short naps - or fallen asleep on the table - but no one’s dared approach Steve about getting some rest himself.

Steve can’t consider it. He can’t stop staring at the miniscule amount of evidence they have. Can’t stop his brain from flashing through scenario after scenario, each more horrifying than the last as the hours tick by. Steve knows the chances; is inescapably familiar with the statistics. If they’d just wanted Tony dead, they wouldn’t have bothered taking him. If they wanted revenge, or to make an example of him, whatever they were planned they’d probably have already done it. Which means they want something from him; it’s a cold comfort, because whatever they want Tony won’t give it to them, and they aren’t going to be asking nicely.

It’s a race, and the clock is running out.

Distantly, Steve is aware that the wood of the conference table he’s leaning back against is creaking under the grip of his hands, the hard edge of it digging into the backs of his thighs where he’s half perched on its edge. He can’t focus on the screen in front of him, but he can’t look away, and it doesn’t matter anyway because he has it memorized - a list of the things Bucky remembered the men saying, side by side Russian and English translations; two fuzzy traffic camera photos, one showing two black SUVs and the partial license plate Bucky gave them and the other a blurry zoom in on the profile of one of the drivers. JARVIS is still working on trying to match the driver through facial recognition, but either the quality of the photo is too low or, by some miracle, whoever the goon is he hasn’t ended up in any databases that would raise a flag yet. Beside the photos are a couple of emails from the CEO of a rival tech company, and an anonymous letter that on the surface looks like a fan letter but has distinctly disturbing undertones; Pepper had flagged both as suspicious enough to be investigated, but so far neither have turned up anything.

Steve startles when the screen in front of him blinks and the files disappear, replaced by a simple text message reading  _ Sergeant Barnes has woken _ . The way the screen flashes tells Steve that this is not JARVIS’ first attempt at giving him the message; the message itself, succinct though it is, tells him the all too familiar state he can expect to find Bucky in. He shouldn’t be surprised, and he isn’t really - on average, Bucky’s memory usually last about three to four days, but it’s almost always less if Bucky gets stressed. No doubt the only reason his memory had lasted this long since the kidnapping was because he’d refused to go to sleep until a few hours ago.

Knowing it was coming, that it was inevitable, doesn’t make the way Steve’s heart clenches and twists any easier. He can’t bring himself to move right away, staying leaning against the conference table as he scrubs a hand over his tired face and tries to clear the dry, itchy haze from his eyes.

“Steve?” Bucky’s voice behind him is confused with an edge of concern, but he’s relatively calm.

Steve takes a breath and tries to paste a smile into his face as he turns to look at Bucky; he fails, miserably. Bucky’s lingering in the doorway, wearing a deep frown that’s part uncertainty and part frustration, and Steve’s body is moving automatically to walk around the paper-strewn conference table and wrap his arms around Bucky, pulling him in close.

Bucky tolerates it for about forty seconds before pulling away and scowling up at Steve. “You look like shit,” Bucky says. He doesn’t completely let go of Steve, his hands lingering on Steve’s arms as he searches Steve’s face. Steve can’t help but duck his head away from the scrutiny; he hasn’t showered or shaved, let alone slept, and he is well aware of how plainly he’s wearing the stress on his face. “What’s going on?” Bucky presses when Steve doesn’t answer him. His eyes flick briefly over Steve’s shoulder and around the room and Steve is hit by a sharp, though perhaps irrational, urge to push Bucky back out of the room and away from the hollow pile of fruitless worry that fills the conference room. He’s gotten used to, if not always good at, explaining to Bucky about the future, even when it comes to telling him that nearly everyone he knew and loved is dead. But how is he supposed to tell Bucky this? How is he supposed to explain that a man Bucky loves but doesn’t remember any more might be- Steve can’t even finish the thought.

Where is he even supposed to start this time?

“Well, Buck, it’s kind of complicated,” he tries. “A lot has happened, it’s 2017-”

“Yeah, the, uh,” Bucky falters and waves his hand vaguely toward the ceiling, “the computer told me about… the future. Nuts, huh?” Bucky’s still trying to peer around Steve’s shoulder, clearly distracted. “Is… Is Tony around? I’d like to-”

Steve has to swallow hard. It isn’t unusual; he can only imagine how weird it would be to see himself kissing a man he doesn’t know on a video, and Bucky usually does want to ground his feelings by actually meeting Tony soon after he wakes. Even though he knows it isn’t fair to JARVIS, and wouldn’t have been fair to Bucky, he wishes he didn’t have to be the one to break the news. “He’s, um, he’s not here,” Steve forces himself to say; the words hurt, grating his throat on the way out and he can’t meet Bucky’s eyes.

Bucky’s frown deepens, the achingly familiar canyon digging in between his eyebrows as he pushes away from Steve and moves over to the conference table. “Where is he?” he asks, but he’s looking at the papers - printed out photos, dossiers on Tony’s known enemies past, present, and potential. Steve knows Bucky’s already putting it together; other people so often forget, or overlook, how smart Bucky is, but Steve never does.

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Steve answers anyway. He finds himself drifting after Bucky, hovering just over his shoulder as though there’s a short line attaching them to each other and preventing Steve from letting Bucky more than a few inches out of reach. It still hurts, but suddenly it’s easy to tell Bucky everything. It’s almost like being back in the war, talking over how to approach the next HYDRA base while they lean over the massive table map. Almost, except for how they’re shooting in the dark, how they don’t know where they’re going or what they’ll find.

“How long has he been gone?” Bucky asks quietly. It’s hard to read Bucky’s face. Steve hates that - there’d been a time when he could read nearly every expression on Bucky’s face, but not any more, not when Bucky’s still lost, floating and untethered to the new future he’s been thrust into. Steve finds himself, not for the first time, trying and failing to imagine what it must be like for Bucky, to live a life that he doesn’t know.

“Almost two and a half days,” Steve says, just as quietly. He’s leaning close, and it’s probably the loss, the aching wound in his chest, but he can’t resist touching Bucky, just ghosting his hand against the small of Bucky’s back as though he himself might come untethered without the contact. 

Bucky’s eyes snap up to glance at Steve and then away again, and there’s a painful understanding in Bucky’s expression that twists the knife in Steve’s gut deeper. Bucky takes half a step closer so that their sides just brush together and he drops his hand under the table to brush against Steve’s hip. “What can I do?”

“Make Steve rest.” Natasha’s voice is brisk and Steve startles as she appears at his side. Bucky doesn’t startle, but he does take half a step back and withdraw his hand.

“Nat-” Steve starts, but she gives him a hard look that makes any argument he might have made die in his throat.

“Go get some rest,” she says firmly. She lowers her voice, leaning in a little as though she’s sharing a secret even though Bucky can easily still hear her. “Go be with him. You both need it. There’s nothing here for you to do, and you’re no good to anyone if you’re dead on your feet when the time to move out comes.”

Steve grimaces, knowing she’s right and hating it anyway. But Natasha is apparently in the mood to hedge her bets because she also gives Bucky a very pointed stare, which makes Bucky blink, and then nod. He starts nudging Steve toward the door in a very pointed way. 

“You’ll call me if-” Steve throws over his shoulder.

“Yes,” she says impatiently, not even letting him finish his sentence. “Go.”

So Steve goes, he and Bucky practically moving in tandem. Bucky doesn’t ask where they’re going, and Steve doesn’t think about it, moving on autopilot. As soon as they elevator doors close behind them Bucky pushes Steve up against the wall, crowding in close with his whole body and just standing there, letting Steve lean against him. Bucky undoubtedly is bursting with questions, but he doesn’t ask any of them, just stays quiet and present and Steve is so grateful that his throat closes over with the threat of tears.

JARVIS takes the elevator up to the penthouse apartment that they share, but as soon as the doors slide open Steve can’t do it. He can’t move. He stares out into their living room where one of Tony’s shirts is casually thrown over the back of the couch and the book Bucky’s been reading is sitting on the coffee table and there are dishes in the sink and Steve just can’t.

“Somewhere else, JARVIS,” he manages to croak after a long minute of being locked in place while Bucky glances between him and the room uncertainly. “Please.”

“Of course, Captain,” JARVIS replies smoothly, without a trace of judgment.

The next time the doors open it’s to the common room, spacious and comfortable with its expansive view out over the terrace and landing pad. The conference room they’ve been working out of is only one floor down from the common room, and they aren’t the first ones to have retreated here for a break - there are haphazard piles of extra pillows and throw blankets on the various couches and a few dishes left out on the counter dividing the living room space from the spacious kitchen.

It’s still hard to move, but Steve doesn’t get much choice as Bucky grips his elbow and propels him forward. He ends up on one of the barstools at the counter that divides the kitchen and living room spaces while Bucky starts rummaging through the fridge. The spacey numbness Steve had been lost in down in the conference room hasn’t faded - it’s more than just tiredness, he thinks distantly, probably some combination of shock and disassociation - and he just stays put, staring blankly at Bucky.

Bucky’s still wearing the tight designer jeans he’d worn on his date with Tony, but the silk button down shirt had gotten torn in the fight and he’s replaced it with a worn hooded henley. It’s got a few grease stains around the edges and there are holes in the cuffs in just the right place for Bucky to hook his thumbs through; it’s Tony’s, one of the lightweight sweatshirts he likes to wear when he’s doing marathon coding and his workshop gets too chilly. Steve wonders, like a punch in the gut, whether Bucky knows the sweatshirt is Tony’s. He probably doesn’t now, but had he when he’d put it on after Sam made him go get cleaned up? None of them are particularly tidy individuals, especially when things get busy, and their clothes tend to end up in communal disorganized heaps in their dresser and closet. 

Steve closes his eyes and for a second he can pretend he’s in the workshop and that everything is okay. In his mind’s eye he can see Tony and Bucky, their dark heads bent together as they tinker with some new piece of tech Tony is working on, tools clanking and friendly bickering punctuated by casual touches and absent kisses. Steve so caught up in the memory - compilation memory, really, it’s happened so many times - he doesn’t notice the first tear slip down his cheek. His eyes squeeze more tightly closed automatically against the prickling burn and he doesn’t come back to reality until his forehead touches the cool surface of the countertop as he folds over on himself.

But then there’s a hand on the back of his neck, fingers carefully petting the short hairs there. Bucky doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask questions or tease him, but Steve forces himself upright anyway, scrubbing roughly at his itching eyes. “‘M sorry,” he mumbles. He feels stupid. There isn’t time for him to fall apart; Tony’s out there somewhere in need of help, and Bucky’s just lost seventy years of life again, and Steve has to keep it together for them, for both of them.

“Hey.” Bucky’s voice is gruff but gentle, and heavy with reprimand. He crowds in closer, pulling Steve around on the stool until he can fit himself between Steve’s knees and thread both hands through Steve’s hair, forcing Steve to look at him. He studies Steve’s face for a long minute, his eyes dark and searching - most of the time Steve is struck by how unsettlingly  _ unchanged _ by everything Bucky is, by the way his condition keeps him trapped in the past, but right now, this is different. It’s not the first time Bucky’s done it, this quiet searching, a deep frown and foreign eyes looking for something Steve can’t see, for the secrets of the universe maybe. It’s still unsettling.

But Bucky doesn’t say anything else. Steve isn’t even sure if Bucky found whatever he was looking for this time, but the moment breaks, Bucky looks away, a quick, furtive glance around the room, and then he’s leaning in to press a chaste kiss to Steve’s lips. “You’re gonna kill yourself worrying,” he chides. And there he is, the same Bucky who force fed Steve chicken soup and fussed over him every time he got sick.

It’s easier just to give in, to let Bucky propel him over to the nearest couch with a bowl full of fruit, a block of cheese, half a loaf of bread, and four chocolate bars. They start out sitting shoulder to shoulder while Bucky hands over pieces of food, but as Steve’s stomach fills and the warmth of Bucky’s body pressed against his own seeps in through his clothes something in him settles a little and he starts to tilt. He gradually shifts from leaning against Bucky’s side, to his head resting on Bucky’s shoulder, to finally lying with his head in Bucky’s lap. He feels tired and heavy and Bucky munches on the last of the bread and cheese while he pets Steve’s hair with his other hand.

Steve doesn’t remember dozing off until his eyes snap back open. Bucky has one of JARVIS’ 20th century history compilation videos playing on the tv with the sound off and captions on and his hand is still resting on Steve’s head. Steve still feels heavy, exhausted and achy inside and out, but he feels a little bit less like he’s falling apart at the seams and it’s easier to get his eyes to focus again. But then he realizes Bucky isn’t actually watching the screen - he’s looking toward the elevator, which has just opened on Natasha looking grim but determined.

Respite over. 

Steve pushes himself up from the couch without a second thought. “What did you find?” he asks, heading for the elevator and knowing without looking that Bucky is right behind him.

“The SUVs were dumped near a dock at Boston Harbor and picked up by Boston PD about twelve hours ago,” Natasha reports as they make their way back into the conference room. “The plates were removed, but CSI found some DNA. Bruce is confirming the tests, but it’s Tony’s.” Steve stiffens, his jaw clenching automatically and Natasha glances sideways at him. “Blood,” she confirms, with a little more gentleness in her tone and her hand rests briefly on Steve’s forearm as she moves past him. “But only trace amounts.”

It shouldn’t be reassuring, and it isn’t really, but it’s enough to allow Steve to breathe again. Sam and Thor are seated at the conference table talking to Clint and Maria; they both look damp and Sam’s still wearing his flight gear. There are new pictures up on the screen, pictures of the docks and the SUVs, inside and out. They don’t really show anything, just nondescript cars surrounded by generic shipping crates with a bit of the harbor just visible in the background. “What else did we get?” Steve asks, because there has to be more, there has to be something  _ actionable _ .

“We ran the VIN numbers on the SUVs,” Clint volunteers. “Turns out, they were rented from a car company here in Manhattan.”

“Rented by who?” The question is immediate and unnecessary since Clint was undoubtedly not done talking, but no one calls Steve on interrupting. 

“Dummy corporation,” Clint shrugs. He gestures and a chart maximizes on the screen; it’s a tree-like graphic with at least thirty names spread out across it and connected by a web of crisscrossing lines. “Of a dummy corporation, of a shell, of a front, of a dummy corporation. The further back we get the twistier it is - we still haven’t tracked down the real players.”

Bucky has drifted closer to the screen and is squinting at it. “Матрёшка companies,” he mutters under his breath, not seeming to be paying any attention to the rest of them. But then he blinks like he’s coming out of a deep train of thought and turns back to them. “You said the docks, did you check-”

“We conducted a most thorough search,” Thor says gravely, shaking his head. “They are not holding him anywhere near where the vehicles were abandoned.”

“Nah, that’d be too easy,” Clint mutters, “Whoever these guys are, they’re kind of sloppy, but they’re not stupid.”   
  
“So we’re no closer than we were before,” Steve says, unable to keep the stress and bitterness from his voice. He almost wishes he’d stayed asleep.

“Not quite.” Maria moves over to the screen and pokes at the chart of dummy corporations. “There’s a small private airstrip a few miles south of that part of the harbor, which, conveniently, is owned by one of the connected dummy corporations.” She taps something on the screen and the box containing the name of the corporation that rented the SUVs highlights along with a green line leading to another box. “And according to the flight plan they filed, a plane left that airstrip about thirty hours ago. Headed for Dudinka in Siberia.”

The muscle in Steve’s jaw tics again. “How sure are we?” he asks, even though it’s all he can do not to run for his shield and the nearest quinjet.

“We… acquired security camera footage of the SUVs heading through the gate to the airstrip.”

Steve takes what feels like his first full breath in nearly three days. “Suit up,” he says.

Everyone moves like a well choreographed dance as they head off to suit up, gather gear, and get the quinjet ready. Steve doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t stop to check what anyone else is doing before he heads for his own gear. He’s pulled on his suit and is in the process of checking through the extra ammunition stored in his utility belt before he realizes that Bucky is standing behind him.

Bucky, having presumably followed him down to the locker room, is squinting at the lockers, glancing from one to the next with a frown. “Which one’s mine?” he asks.

Steve freezes, his stomach clenching. “Buck, I-” he falters. They’d talked about it, a couple of times. Bucky is still a hell of a good fighter; they all take turns sparring with him regularly which serves both to keep Bucky’s skills sharp and is invariably a good workout. In the year since Bucky had settled into the Tower, things had for the most part been blessedly quiet and the Avengers hadn’t been called out for much, mostly just a couple of recon missions and diplomatic meetings requiring only a couple of them at a time. But the idea of Bucky actually out in the field, actually-

“I don’t have one,” Bucky says, apparently oblivious to the fact that Steve suddenly can’t breathe as his eyes sweep over the row of lockers again. “You don’t want me to come.”

Steve has to swallow hard against the way his throat has closed over. “You know I always want you there to watch my back,” he says, which is true - he’ll never get used to going into a fight without knowing that Bucky is at his side, never be able to stop himself from occasionally looking around to check for him even when Bucky isn’t there. “But, with your condition, if your memory went again while we were out in the field- and, and we’re walking blind here, we really don’t know what we’re getting into or what-” He’s rambling and his eyes are burning and he can hear the quinjet’s engines roaring to life as the rest of the team waits for him and every second that he delays is another second that Tony might be- “I’m sorry, I know it’s selfish and I’m asshole, but there isn’t time and I… I can’t do this if I have to worry about you both,” he says. He sounds terrible, he  _ feels _ terrible; he knows it’s stupid and wrong but he can’t stop himself from saying it.

Bucky stares at him, his dark eyes piercing and foreign again and his mouth pressed into a tight, thin line. He has his arms crossed over his chest and his feet planted in an evenly balanced stance - for a moment, whether Bucky knows it or not, it’s the Winter Soldier standing there with very little trace of the easy-going exuberance that Bucky usually carries. Bucky’s going to fight him, he’s going to insist on coming, Steve knows it. Or maybe Bucky won’t even bother to argue, maybe he’ll just storm off for the quinjet and go to battle in jeans and a sweatshirt and just his bare metal fist.

“Please, Bucky,” Steve says. He doesn’t expect it to make a difference but he still can’t breathe and the corners of his eyes won’t stop burning and his voice is cracking and he just can’t stop the words. “I can’t risk losing you both.”

Time stands frozen, but then Bucky nods. He doesn’t quite deflate - there’s still tension and anger in every line of his body, but he uncrosses his arms and his eyes are no longer so foreign. “You’d better bring this Tony guy back,” he says, his voice a sullen grumble. “I want to meet him.”

Steve manages a weak watery smile. “I will,” he promises. He hesitates, almost unsure how Bucky will react, but it’s worth it and he leans in to give Bucky a chaste kiss and squeeze his arm before moving past him. 

He’s halfway across the hanger when Bucky shouts after him, “Don’t you dare get your dumb ass shot, Rogers!” and he actually laughs a little as he boards the quinjet.

It’s going to be okay, he tells himself. It has to be.


	4. Chapter 3

Bucky glowers after the vanished spectre of Steve’s crazy future-plane for a long time. He’s pissed - justifiably, he thinks - about being left behind, but it’s a strangely distant feeling, like he’s mad without  _ quite _ being able to work up the energy to  _ be mad _ about it. 

But eventually, the reality that he’s been left behind sets in. Alone - as far as he knows - in a strange place. For an indeterminate amount of time. With effectively nothing to do but putter around and worry. And it really fucking sucks.

But what else is Bucky going to do? He putters. 

He goes back to the room where Steve took his nap. The paused video he’d been watching is still on the massive tv screen, but he can’t sit still long enough to continue watching it. There are a few dishes scattered around, so he collects them and takes them into the kitchen to wash; the computer in the ceiling informs him that he can simply put them in the automatic dish washer, but there’s something soothing about the flow of the tap and the familiar motion of scrubbing, so he insists on doing them by hand anyway. Finding the correct cabinets to put the dishes away in once they’re washed and dried even takes up another five minutes. Steve always used to tease him about his tendency to clean whenever he was nervous or upset, but it works, so he ignores the echo of Steve’s laughter while he folds the blankets draped over the couches and stacks books, hand held computers, and other random objects into neat, organized piles.

Eventually, he runs out of things to clean, and with the computer’s helpful guidance he makes his way up to the floor where Steve hadn’t wanted to go earlier. Most of the video clips of his forgotten life had been set in the common room where Steve napped, in large exercise spaces, or in some sort of workshop full of weird machines and actual, honest to god robots. But he knows this floor too, the one at the very top of the building. The clips of scenes from the rest of the building had contained various groups of people - mostly the ones who had flown away with Steve, who are apparently their friends. But the videos set in these rooms - a fully furnished apartment bigger than any single family home Bucky had ever seen growing up - those videos were private, intimate, and contained only himself, Steve, and Tony. Tony, who Bucky had watched swearing and laughing while covered in grease, who apparently had a habit of falling asleep in his breakfast, who the very sight of made Bucky’s heart pick up a little in a sort of fizzy, warm way. Tony, who liked to play with Bucky’s hair while they lay together on the couch, who would nuzzle his face into the crook of Bucky’s neck and shoulder, who would kiss Bucky slow and lazy and then hard and needy.

It’s unsettling to think that he’s had a life with a man he’s never met, to have the dissonance of watching himself doing things he hasn’t done. That feeling seems somehow bigger as he steps out of the elevator and into the penthouse apartment - like the walls themselves are echoing a life he doesn’t remember living at him. There are clothes and dishes left lying about here too - apparently, in addition to being so ungodly rich that they have at least seven entire apartments, they are also all slobs. So Bucky repeats his earlier process of tidying, though it takes longer this time; he keeps getting distracted. He stops halfway through folding a sweater to impulsively bury his face in it and breathe in the smell; he can’t identify the scent clinging to the fabric, but it makes something in his shoulders loosen and a dopey smile spread across his face. There’s a book sitting on the coffee table that he stands in the middle of the room and reads three pages of before he catches himself - there are little notes in the margins in his own handwriting that tells him he’s read it before but the words might as well be brand fucking new for all he remembers. 

In the middle of putting away the dishes he starts to poke at one of the appliances on the counter, which after a few minutes the computer helpfully informs him is a coffee maker. Since the computer, apparently, actually does control _everything_  in the building, it turns the coffee maker on and helpfully brews him a fresh pot. It’s delicious, warm and rich and nothing like the burnt, bitter drink he’s used to. The computer directs him toward something called caramel macchiato creamer, which turns out to be so delicious he can’t resist drinking a second cup. And when the pot is empty Bucky takes his time washing out the mug for a second time before finally putting it away. 

The bedroom provides a whole new host of strange and conflicting feelings. The bed is made on one side, but the is duvet folded down on the other. There’s a set of charcoal pencils lined up on the table on the unmade side, and on closer inspection the sheets have several gray smears and some all too familiar shavings on them. Bucky is therefore not at all surprised to find a small moleskin sketchbook left haphazardly in the sheets.

He picks it up, and abruptly has to sit down. The bed is soft under his ass, but he barely notices as he starts to carefully flip through the sketchbook; it’s Steve’s alright, as if he’d had any doubts. Steve was always good, but he’s gotten noticeably better in the past seventy years. He never used to be all that good at portraits, favoring cityscapes and silly cartoons, but some of the portraits in this sketchbook are bordering on breathtaking. Maybe it’s stupid, but looking at the hodgepodge of sketches that fill the pages, facial studies, full body sketches, group scenes that are at once hazy and filled with surprising little details, somehow they seem more informative than the hours of video Bucky had watched. Steve’s art, more than anything, is an expression of emotion through form, and there’s a tenderness with which Steve has shaped the lines that depict their friends - their  _ family _ Bucky realizes abruptly. These people who had seemed like strange but interesting strangers when he’d watched his now forgotten past-self interact with them are now suddenly, intimately,  _ Steve’s people _ and Bucky is there in the drawings right alongside them. 

He has to jerk his head up and set the book aside quickly when a tear lands on a page depicting Clint and Natasha dancing together. His right hand is shaking a little when he lifts it to swipe at his cheeks, and he can’t help but to feel a little embarrassed, even though there’s no one here to witness his emotional display.

He’s not just bored, he’s realizes, and he’s more than worried. He’s lonely, and terrified. He loves these people, even the ones he hasn’t properly met, and now they’re all off somewhere in danger while he sits around uselessly.

He closes the sketchbook sharply and shoves it into his pocket before hastily wiping the rest of the tears away. It takes a few shaky breaths, but then he’s moving again, organizing Steve’s pencils into a neater line and stripping the sheets off of the bed. The computer tells him where to find the laundry room and fresh sheets to put on the bed. He launders some of the clothes laying around while he’s at it, then folds them and puts them away; it’s easier not to think too hard, about anything, so he lets himself move by rote and refuses to question how he knows where things go.

“Pardon my intrusion, Sergeant Barnes,” the computer says, while Bucky is blinking blankly at the apartment looking for something else to do.

“Uh, yeah… JARVIS, right?” Bucky starts a little at the voice, and he can’t seem to stop himself from looking up toward the ceiling, even though there’s nothing really to look at. “You need something?”

“Yes, JARVIS is my designation,” JARVIS says, not seeming bothered by Bucky’s uncertainty. “Per your usual schedule, it is my duty to inform you that you are overdue for a meal. If you do not wish to prepare something from the kitchen, I can place an order from your list of preferred restaurants.”

“... I have a list of preferred restaurants?” Bucky asks stupidly, before he can catch himself. 

“Quite an extensive list,” JARVIS confirms. The nearest tv screen flickers on and a list pops up. Most of the names on the list mean nothing to Bucky, but when he pokes at the screen color pictures of the restaurants and their menus come up. It’s impressive, and a little overwhelming.

But Bucky’s attention is drawn to the side of the screen where Barnes_Restaurant Preferences is only one in a long list of files marked with his name. He pokes at the one labeled Medical Files and it opens to a whole array of charts and images, filled with words that he doesn’t understand. 

“Sergeant Barnes?” JARVIS prompts, the synthetic voice perfectly neutral.

“Uh, right, yeah,” Bucky startles a little anyway. “Do I have money?” it occurs to him, belatedly, to ask.

“You have an account that is maintained in your name, as well as access to both Captain Rogers’ and one of Mr. Stark’s accounts,” JARVIS replies, like that’s nothing, like the idea that Bucky has access to enough money to put in  _ three different  _ accounts is normal.

Bucky might freak out about that later, once he isn’t so busy look at what appears to be an x-ray of half a truck’s worth of metal plating  _ inside his body _ .

“Sergeant Barnes?” JARVIS prompts again. “Would you like for me to place an order?”

Bucky isn’t actually hungry, but he has a feeling JARVIS isn’t going to let this go. “Sure, yeah,” he answers distractedly. “Surprise me, I guess.” If JARVIS says anything else, Bucky doesn’t hear it. He’s found a series of images that look like an oblong gray circle splotched with darker spots. There are circles drawn around some of the darkest blotches and notes written off to the side; notes that contain words like cranial lesions, grey matter degradation, and neural-rewiring. “Hey, uh, is this my brain?” he asks, almost not meaning to say the words aloud and momentarily forgetting that there is actually someone around to answer him. “These dark spots, is that why I can’t remember stuff?”

“Those are CT scans recording your brain tissue, yes,” JARVIS confirms, and Bucky may be imagining it but it sounds like there’s some reservation in the AI’s voice. 

There’s a note beside one of the scans. It reads  _ long term effects of repeated cranial electrical stimulation _ and it’s highlighted in blue. Bucky pokes it, and a new file opens.

The first thing he sees is his own face. Except, it doesn’t look like his face. It’s too thin and too pale and trapped behind a glass window frosted in ice. Instinctively, Bucky stumbles back a step, and if his hand wasn’t right at that moment pressed to his chest, feeling the too fast, too hard thump-thump of his heart in his chest, he would swear that the picture on the screen is his own corpse.

“W-What the hell is that?” Bucky stammers. He can’t stop staring at the picture, except that there’s so much more in the file. A chair that looks like something out of a science fiction magazine with thick, heavy manacles bolted to it. A shoulder that ends abruptly in raw, bloody strings where there should be an arm. Other bodies. Dead bodies. Bodies with a bullet hole square between open, vacant eyes. There are files too, reports; the format feels vaguely familiar, neat lines of typed text, listing dates, names, locations, and methods of execution.

“It is not advised that you view those files without the presence of a companion,” JARVIS interrupts, and the screen flickers but the files, the photos, are still there.

“This is me,” Bucky says, his voice cracking. “These are me. I did this, didn’t I? I killed these people.”

“Sergeant Barnes, please try to calm yourself.” JARVIS definitely sounds distressed now and the screen flickers again.

“What did they do to me?” Bucky’s voice is loud, too loud in his own ears and suddenly he’s clamping his hands over both ears and scrambling back away from the screen. The backs of his legs hit something - he doesn’t know what, it doesn’t matter - and suddenly he’s on his ass, scrambling backward until his back hits a wall.

The screen goes black. “Sergeant Barnes, you are safe. You are in Avengers Tower in New York City and it is 2017. You a secure and in no danger.”

Bucky is panting, clutching at his chest so hard that it hurts. If he could just  _ see _ his heart maybe, maybe then he’d know for sure that he’s really alive and that this is real. The fabric of his shirt tears under his hand and cold, unforgiving metal is digging into his chest - someone is going to cut him open, someone is going to make him into another one of those pictures of a dead body on a gurney that somehow has his face- Except that cold, metal is his _ own hand _ , fingers that are attached to his body, that are responding to his thoughts clutching at his chest and tearing shallow, red welts across his skin.

He might be screaming.

“Sergeant Barnes!” The voice in the ceiling is yelling at him, urgent and insistent, and the roaring panic in Bucky’s ears is finally starting to recede enough for him to hear the voice.

The screen turns back on, but the horrifying pictures are gone. Instead the image shows a bedroom, the same bedroom where Bucky had found Steve’s sketchbook. It’s a video, slightly shaky as the camera moves into the room. 

“Rise and shine, sleeping beauties,” a cheerful voice behind the camera declares. The camera moves over to the bed and a grease-stained hand appears, shoving none too gently at a lump in the thick duvet. There’s a loud groan and Steve’s head appears, sleep tousled and grumpy as he scowls at the camera.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Steve grouches.

“Today is a new day and I am filled with vigor,” the voice behind the camera declares.

Steve groans and buries his face into the pillow, pulling the duvet over his head. The voice behind the camera makes a disapproving noise and the picture becomes a dizzying blur for several seconds as, apparently, the man holding it leaps onto the bed on top of Steve, gets shoved off, and ends up in the middle of the bed nestled between the Steve-lump and a second, slightly smaller lump. 

When the image focuses again, it’s like Bucky’s been punched in the stomach. It’s Tony, with crazy hair sticking up at all angles and dark circles under his eyes, but a bright, smug grin splitting his whole face as he smirks up at the camera he’s holding over his head. “Here, ladies and gentlemen,” Tony narrates, “we find the slumbering super soldiers in their natural habitat. Be warned, super soldiers can be excessively grumpy when woken unexpectedly, and are often prone to displays of aggressive-” The second lump moves, cutting Tony off and Bucky sees his own head - or, rather, his own mess of hair - appear out from under the duvet. Seconds later, the metal arm follows and it drops on top of Tony, curling around him and hauling him bodily closer until video-Bucky can drop his entire body on top of Tony.

“Shut the fuck up.” Boy, is it weird to hear his own voice played back to him on the video. But Bucky can’t dwell on that because he’s too busy staring at how overwhelmingly  _ happy _ Tony looks. On the screen, Tony turns his face toward Bucky, nuzzling his nose into Bucky’s hair somewhere in the vicinity of Bucky’s ear and he must have found the sensitive spot there because Bucky twitches and snorts and makes a half hearted effort to shove Tony away.

“Come on, gorgeous, smile for the camera,” Tony prompts, poking at Bucky insistently. “Show us those baby blues.” Bucky-on-the-screen half turns, enough so that his face emerges from the mass of his hair, but he pays no attention to the camera that Tony’s holding, instead planting a big, smacking kiss to Tony’s cheek.

“You’d fucking better not put that on the internet,” Steve mumbles, still completely hidden beneath the blankets.

“Quit grouching, Rogers,” Bucky says. His hand reaches somewhere out of the camera’s shot, and guessing from the squeak that Steve makes it landed somewhere obscene. A second later Steve’s head reappears to glare at both Bucky and Tony, who are trying and failing to look innocent.

“I hate you both,” Steve says, with conviction, but he plucks the camera from Tony’s hands and holds it up so that all three of them are centered in the frame. 

The video freezes on that shot, all three of them cuddled up practically on top of each other and grinning up at the camera.

Bucky’s still sitting on the floor with his back pressed up against a wall, his shirt torn and chest aching. But he can breathe again. There are tears in his eyes, itchy and aching, and he feels… hollow, like all of his insides have been scooped out, but he feels strangely lighter, better for it.

It’s too much. Too many things to feel, too much to deal with all at once.

He has to move.

He pushes himself to his feet, feeling shaky and wrung out. It would be better, maybe, if he could actually cry but the tears just linger in his eyes, burning, refusing to fall.

He ends up back in the conference room with no memory of how he got there. The files are all still there, just as the team had left them. Papers strewn across the table, chairs scattered around haphazardly, and the graph of shell corporations, the pictures of the abandoned cars, and a grainy image from the airstrip spread out across the screens. 

He collapses into the nearest chair without meaning too, his legs suddenly too shaky to hold him any more. He stares blankly at the screens for a long time. He thinks maybe JARVIS is trying to get his attention again, but he doesn’t answer. His eyes trace restlessly, unconsciously over the chart of connected shell corporations, still lacking a root to tell them who is actually responsible for Tony’s abduction. He reads the names of the corporations again and again, traces the connections JARVIS has managed to make between them.

Something clicks in his brain and abruptly he stands up.

“He’s not in Siberia,” he says, barely understanding the words even as he says them.

“Pardon?” JARVIS asks, sounding more surprised than a computer should be capable of.

“They’re wrong. Steve was wrong. They aren’t going to find Tony in Siberia.” Bucky moves over to the screen almost unconsciously, focusing in on the picture of the two abandoned SUVs. “There’s one missing,” Bucky says. He pulls up the report he’d apparently given Steve after the abduction, the report that says there’d been three SUVs. “Where’s the third SUV?”

There’s a pause. “Excepting your initial report on the abduction, I have no records indicating the presence of a third vehicle,” JARVIS says after a moment.

“Oh.” Something in Bucky deflates. “Maybe I was wrong.” It should be relief; he shouldn’t be looking for evidence that Steve and his team ran off in the wrong direction.

“Sergeant Barnes, if you have reason to believe that the Avengers are searching the wrong location, then we must investigate the possibility.” There’s something unsteady in JARVIS’s voice and the files on the screen shift and shuffle, three more holographic screens appearing in the area so that more files can be visible at once.

Bucky swallows hard, staring at the files until his eyes won’t focus any more. “You care about him too, don’t you,” he says quietly, slumping back into the nearest chair and rubbing a hand over his aching eyes.

“Mr. Stark is my creator,” JARVIS answers primly.

“Yeah, but you  _ care _ ,” Bucky reiterates. 

There are several minutes of silence, a heavy silence that hangs in the air. “This is not the first time that Sir has been… taken,” JARVIS says eventually, the heaviness of the silence still carrying through in his voice. One of the screens shifts and shows a photograph of Tony, looking younger and thinner, with his arm in a sling and a dark bruise around one eye. The image is accompanied by a headline reading  _ Billionaire Returns After Three Month Captivity In Desert _ .

“Three months is a long time,” Bucky says, a mix of relief and anxiety settling in the pit of his stomach. “He’s been gone less than three days this time.”

“Extended survival in a kidnapping situation is a statistical anomaly,” JARVIS says, his voice a little quieter. “In the previous circumstance, Sir’s disappearance was masked by a violent military action and he was presumed dead by most. In this instance, with witnesses to his abduction, there is likely to be much more pressure. His captors will be less patient.”

“How much time does he have?” Bucky asks quietly.

“That is impossible to calculate,” JARVIS says, though Bucky has a feeling he’s lying. Then, after a long pause, he adds, “not long.”

“Steve’ll find him,” Bucky says, but the words feel hollow, wrong somehow. Bucky chews distractedly on his lower lip, and he finds himself staring at the files again. “Wait, what’s that word?” he asks, leaning forward and gesturing toward the screen where a transcript of what the kidnappers had said while taking Tony is displayed. “Yupas?”

“Agent Romanov believed it to be a mispronunciation of the Russian word Упасть, meaning ‘to drop’,” JARVIS reports.

Bucky frowns and shakes his head. “No, it’s… it’s a place, isn’t it?” He pushes himself to his feet and over to the screen still showing the chart of shell companies. He can’t explain it, his hand moving seemingly randomly to one of the companies listed, a small cosmetics research facility in… Yupas, Nebraska. “That’s it,” Bucky says, “that’s where they took Tony. JARVIS, you’ve got to call Steve and get him back. They’re going in the wrong direction.”

“Sergeant, this is something to consider, but it does not qualify as proof,” JARVIS responds, but Bucky could swear he sounds distracted. 

“It’s about as much as Steve had when he made the call to ship out!” Bucky retorts. He starts to pace, restless and helpless. He knows, distantly, that none of this is JARVIS’s fault, and worse that JARVIS is technically right. But there’s a hollow ache in the pit of his stomach and an itch in the back of his mind shrieking  _ wrong, wrong, wrong! _ and  _ god I have to find him _ . “Get Steve, I need to talk to him!”

“My apologies, Sergeant,” JARVIS says after a moment. “I am trying to contact him but I am receiving no response.”   
  


“Well get someone!” he insists, feeling desperate. “If there’s even a chance they’re looking in the wrong place-”

“This is not necessarily a cause for alarm,” JARVIS cautions, though his voice speaks to the contrary. “It is not uncommon for members of the team to be temporarily out of contact while on a mission. I will continue my attempts.”

“And I’ll just sit here with my thumbs up my ass,” Bucky grumbles dejectedly.

“Your food has arrived if you wish to retrieve it,” JARVIS says, no doubt in an effort to be helpful. But Bucky has never been less hungry in his life.

He finds himself pacing. He stalks aimlessly anywhere there’s floor, without looking, without paying attention, without caring. The horrifying images from the file about himself are mixing in his head with the video of the three of them in bed, blood and innocent happiness a nauseating mix twisting his insides into knots. Several times he thinks he might actually vomit, though there’s not enough in his stomach to eject.

“Sergeant Barnes,” JARVIS speaks up, urgent and interrupting Bucky’s aimless stalking. “I have, what I believe may be termed, bad news and worse news.”

Bucky freezes, looking up at the ceiling pointlessly. “Might as well break it to me,” he says, swallowing hard.

  
“I still cannot make contact with any of the Avengers. The GPS signal from their quinjet lost satellite contact twenty three minutes ago and I cannot seem to reestablish the connection,” JARVIS reports grimly. 

And that sounds bad. Bucky may not fully understand what GPS and satellites are, but he’s pretty sure that’s really bad news. He forces himself to take a breath and lets his head rest on the nearest wall for a moment. “What’s the worse news?”

“I am afraid that your suspicions were correct. I have managed to locate traffic camera footage of a man that I believe matches the description of the man who rented the SUVs.” JARVIS pauses. “Traffic camera footage in Nebraska, near Yupas.”

Bucky blinks hard, so dizzy and exhausted from all this useless stress and worry that he thinks he’d fall over without the wall’s support. “How long would it take them to get back here, to go get him?” he asks, speaking with his cheek resting against the wallpaper.

“If I could make contact with them-” JARVIS starts, but he falters and stops.

“Too long,” Bucky answers for him. “You can’t reach them and they won’t be able to get back here and… and Tony’s running out of time.” His knees give out and he just manages to turn around in time to slide down the wall. He lets his legs sprawl out limply in front of him, staring at his toes despondently. “Do you think they’re dead?” he asks, and he doesn’t want to, it’s almost too terrible to say, but if he can’t stop the words.

“It would be rash to presume that,” JARVIS says, immediately and firmly, which isn’t a  _ no _ exactly, but it’s still reassuring. “We do not yet know what the real objective here is, or who is behind it, but we can be certain that the facility the Avengers were on their way to investigate is connected. My inability to contact them is deeply troubling, and a situation I will continue endeavouring to rectify, but the team is well trained for these situations.”

So they’re in trouble, but they can probably handle it, is what JARVIS is really saying. That’s all well and good for JARVIS, Bucky supposes. But that still leaves Tony in the kind of trouble he probably  _ can’t _ handle, and Bucky sitting around twiddling his thumbs while literally everyone in the entire world that he knows are in danger.

“What do we do?” he asks, feeling empty and numb, feeling hopeless. He doesn’t expect an answer, or rather, he expect JARVIS to give him some shit about patience and maybe trying telling him he should  _ eat _ again.

JARVIS doesn’t answer right away, and Bucky is about to roll his eyes to himself. But then JARVIS does speak, and he sounds distinctly… hesitant. “Sergeant, if I may be so bold-” JARVIS starts, stops, and then starts again. “You may be Mr. Stark’s only hope.”

Bucky almost laughs, a dry, coarse sound. “Me? What can I do?” He shakes his head. “Steve left me behind for a reason. And after seeing that- those things I did, the people I killed-” he makes the sound again and it actually feels raw and grating in his throat- “No wonder Steve doesn’t trust me.”

“Respectfully, Sergeant, I do not think mistrust factored into the Captain’s decision,” JARVIS cuts in.

“Right, then it’s because I’m an invalid with a head full of cracks.” Bucky shakes his head. “That isn’t much better.”

“Sergeant Barnes,” JARVIS’ voice is abruptly sharp and harsh, “Mr. Stark does not have time for you to wallow in self-pity. Granted, you have not been formally cleared for field combat, and Captain Rogers expressed some valid concerns. However, I have extensive documentation supporting your martial skills, and I must repeat, given the circumstances, Mr. Stark’s life rests on your shoulders.”

Bucky sighs, shoving himself to his feet clumsily. He has to push himself up using the wall and his legs feel distant and uncoordinated under him for the first few steps. “Okay. What do I do?”

There are no more questions, no more hesitation. JARVIS directs Bucky to a cache of extra weapons and tactical gear. There is an unsettling sense of deja vu that he can’t actually place as he pulls on a heavy tactical vest and loads up with every knife, gun, and ammo clip he can find a pocket for.

It’s only once he’s fully dressed and equipped that it occurs to Bucky to ask, “how… am I supposed to get to Nebraska?”

“ _ We _ will be going to Nebraska, Sergeant Barnes,” JARVIS corrects. JARVIS directs him to a floor that Bucky has never been to, but has seen videos of himself looking incredibly comfortable in. It’s Tony’s lab, full of disassembled machinery, tools, half finished experiments, and several whistling, over eager robots that immediately start vying for his attention as soon as he crosses the threshold. On the far side of the room is a row of display cases. Display cases holding armor. He’s seen Tony wearing the suits in some of the videos, has read the file on Iron Man.

Bucky hesitates, feelings somehow like he’s intruding, almost like he’s violating something. But one of the cases opens and the sleek red and gold armor steps forward with heavy, clanking footsteps. “Please, climb aboard, Sergeant Barnes, so that we may be on our way,” JARVIS says, leaving no room for argument. His voice is now somehow coming from the armor rather than the speakers in the wall, and the armor shifts, the sounds of metal and machinery moving filling the air as the suit of armor splits down the center and opens up.

“In that?” Bucky hesitates. “I mean… that’s Tony’s. I can’t-”

“Sergeant Barnes, my systems are fully integrated into the suit’s mechanics. It is the fastest way to get you to Nebraska, and will provide me with a physical presence to provide you with back up in your rescue efforts,” JARVIS says, prim and impatient.

Bucky swallows hard. “You really think this is the right thing to do? That we can save him?”

“If we do this, we might save him,” JARVIS says. “If we do not-” JARVIS doesn’t finish that sentence. He doesn’t need to.

Bucky climbs into the armor. It’s bizarre and claustrophobic to let the metal suit close around him, completely encasing him. It’s dizzying to try to read the array of rapidly scrolling numbers and data across the display that lights up in front of his face. Bucky can’t see where they’re going, he has no control, but he can feel the suit moving, listens to JARVIS’ report as they lift off, zooming out through a tunnel and up into the fresh air.

“We’re coming, Tony,” he catches himself muttering, the heady rush of adrenalin overwhelming everything else as JARVIS pilots the armor at breakneck speed toward the sunset.


	5. Chapter 4

It’s still raining, and Bucky is still not in Brooklyn. 

Part of him desperately hopes this whole thing is some kind of crazy dream, that any minute he’s going to wake up safe and dry in their rickety bed with Steve drooling on his shoulder. But in the meantime, he can’t just sit here in this tunnel and stare at a faceless armored body. He tucks the sketchbook securely away in an inner pocket of his tactical vest where it will be safe both from the water and… whatever else might be about to happen. He draws and checks every one of the weapons he’s loaded down with, testing the edges of the knives and unloading the guns to check their clips, inventorying the pockets of extra ammo. He does it automatically, without thinking, without planning to do it. And when he’s done, he pushes the damp strings of hair away from his face to access the situation.

It isn’t a hard guess that if it’s a rescue mission he’s on, the suspiciously nondescript buildings surrounded by razor wire fence are probably his target.

He pauses, hesitating, giving one more look toward the sprawled figure sharing his shelter. But the blood smeared across the metal of the armor is old and dried, a crusty brown that’s starting to flake and run off where the water drips on it. For good or ill, whoever is inside of that thing isn’t going anywhere, so Bucky turns his back on it and heads out.

The rain is still coming down in a light but steady torrent. There’s at least forty yards of tall grass and mud between the tunnel and the outer fence of the compound, and Bucky has to move cautiously. He can’t see anyone - from the outside the place may well be deserted - but a sentry could come around the corner at any moment, so Bucky crouches down as much as he can in the tall grass, tries to ignore the squelch of mud under his boots, and makes slow progress across the open field. His eyes scan the vicinity every few seconds, sweeping both the compound in front of him, the tunnel behind him, and the road off to the side. It’s automatic, instinctual. It’s almost too easy.

He’s met no interference, and there’s still no sight of any guards, when he reaches the fence. He pauses, listening instinctively with his ear tilted toward the fence but there’s no sound over the steady patter of the rain. One concern set aside, he takes a step back to survey the fence. As far as he can tell it completely surrounds the compound, with no clear breaks or gaps aside from the massive gate - which is currently closed - cutting across the road leading into the compound. The fence itself is tall and sturdy, made of thick razor wire that - while starting to rust in some places - is still dangerously sharp.

He doesn’t have long to deliberate, already feeling far too exposed out in the open. Half heartedly he starts to move toward the gate - it isn’t a good option, and if there are guards watching any part of this place that’s where they’ll be. But then he pauses, and looks down at his left hand.

The rain makes a plinking sound against it that almost matches the sound of the rain hitting the fence. There are reddish-brown stains caught in the grooves between the plates, despite the water beading and rolling off of the surface. He frowns, concentrating, and experimentally curls the fingers into a fist - it’s hard, and painful. The fingers move with a sort of jerky stiffness and fiery pain shoots into his shoulder and through his chest. But he grits his teeth and tries again, gingerly moving the whole arm, then something seems to shift and clank inside of the arm and the whole thing rotates around his shoulder like a socket wrench. The movement is abrupt, jerky, and painful enough that it momentarily whites out his vision and drops him to his knees. The arm does it twice more, and then the clanking is replaced by a low whir, the pain dies down to a distant throb, and the hand curls into a fist as easily and smoothly as his flesh one does.

It takes Bucky a second to catch his breath, but as soon as he’s able he pushes himself quickly back to his feet. He can’t think about how incredibly weird what just happened is, or even that he has a  _ goddamn metal arm _ \- he’s been out in the open too long, hesitated too long. He reaches out with the metal hand and grabs a section of the fence, the metal creaking and groaning but giving way as easily as slicing bread when Bucky tears the metal hand through it, the razor wire useless.

As soon as he’s cleared a hole big enough Bucky steps through and dashes in to press his back against the nearest building. He freezes, waiting breathlessly for sirens or shouts of alarm, but none come. After waiting several minutes to be sure, he cautiously edges along the wall, his pulse hammering audibly in his throat, until he can peer around the edge of the building.

The compound appears to be set up in a loose sort of U configuration, the building Bucky is leaning against forming one of the longer ends, with the main gate to the compound over to his left, and a massive metal grate in the open center of the U. The grate is circular, perfectly clear of any dirt or debris, and solid but for a thin crease cutting across the diameter. All of the buildings are equally non-descript, squat and wide made of smooth gray cement with only a couple of very small windows sparsely breaking up the monotony of the blank walls. The building in the center has a short tower stacked on its roof. The tower is made of the same plain concrete as the rest of the buildings, but is topped a solid circle of windows looking out in all 360 degrees.

Bucky is debating the risk of going for the door at the end of the building he’s sheltering behind, which would put him in view of the gate where he can now see two guards, versus trying to climb through one of the very small windows, which probably aren’t designed to open, when the shrill ring of a siren reaches his ears. The sound is coming from inside the buildings, distant and muffled by the concrete, but it makes Bucky jump anyway. He immediately, instinctively flattens himself back against the wall, a litany of  _ fuckfuckfuckfuck _ flashing through his brain.

The guards are abandoning the gate and heading toward him, and Bucky realizes there’s a gun in his hand before he’s even thought to draw it. He has about three seconds to wonder frantically what the fuck he’s doing; where is this place? Why is he even here? Is he really about to die - or kill people, maybe both - trying to save some man he’s never met?

The guards are almost on him and it feels stupid to be hiding against the side of the building when the alarm clearly means they already know he’s there. But he looks up, and his eyes catch on the edge of the flat roof… not too far above him. He peers cautiously back around the edge of the building, and the guards are still several years away but they’re definitely heading toward this part of the building. He can’t afford to hesitate any more, doesn’t have time to think it through, he just shoves the gun back in its holster, takes a couple of steps back from the wall, and jumps. He just barely makes it, his metal hand catching the edge of the roof by the fingertips and his chest slamming against the wall so hard that it nearly knocks the wind out of him. There’s no time to catch his breath, and he has to grit his teeth to keep from shouting as he strains upward, the machinery in the arm whirring and grinding, and then he’s on top of the roof. He flops on his back, staring up at the cloudy sky and trying not to pant too loudly.

Below, the guards have reached the door. “Fuck this, not again,” one of the guards mutters, and Bucky hears the sound of the door opening and slamming closed again.

They didn’t find him. They didn’t even  _ look _ around the side of the building where he’d been hiding - which is sloppy of them, and he feels vaguely insulted by it.  _ Not again _ what? Maybe he isn’t the first rescue attempt. Maybe the alarm isn’t actually about him. Maybe- fuck, he doesn’t know! He doesn’t know anything about this shithole of a situation. Maybe he should just turn around, crawl back out through the fence, and hightail it for the first town he can find.

Except he can’t do that.

It’s stupid. It’s irrational. The only proof he has of anything is a sketch and a message written  _ in fucking blood _ , what the fuck even? But his heart is pounding so hard his ribs feel like they’re about to break and there’s something thick and hard to breathe around in his throat, and inexplicably he  _ knows _ that somewhere in this compound is a gorgeous man in need of his help.

So he spares another thirty seconds to catch his breath, then carefully rolls into a crouch. There’s a roof access door at the base of the watch tower, and since no one has shot at him or, apparently, taken any notice of him at all yet, Bucky figures it’s worth a shot. Nevertheless, he stays in a crouch as he carefully crosses the roof. He easily leaps the gap between the two buildings, landing in a smooth roll before coming back up and making a dash for the access door. It’s locked, and Bucky shouldn’t be surprised, but he’s momentarily stymied. Frustration and anxiety are bubbling nauseatingly in his stomach. His fist clenches compulsively around the doorknob… and it crumples in his hand. He frowns, yanking hard, and the door pops open so hard that it nearly rips entirely off of the hinges.

A slow grin spreads across Bucky’s face as he stares down at the crumpled metal in his fist, and, suddenly, the panic recedes a little. Because this entire situation is absolutely bananas, but he has a  _ goddamned metal hand _ that is unbelievably strong and seemingly indestructible. Maybe things aren’t so bad after all.

He draws the semi-automatic gun strapped to his back, the weight of it strangely reassuring in his hand as he makes his way carefully into the tower. The siren is louder inside the building, and a flashing red light on the wall is alternately too bright and too dim in a way that is dizzying and disorienting. He has to close his eyes, for just a second, take a breath, and when he opens his eyes again he can push the blare of the siren to the back of his mind, listening around it for other sounds. Distantly he hears voices and footsteps from the rest of the building below, and despite the lack of stable overhead lights he has no trouble seeing through even the deepest shadowed corners. 

He stalks down the stairwell - there’s no other word for it, his movements a smooth, steady prowl, his gaze sweeping the stairs ahead of him and the muzzle of his gun leading the way. The panic is gone, left in its wake an inexplicable calm, a determination. Something cold and hard settled in the pit of his stomach that says, even without knowing what he’s walking into, that  _ they’re _ the ones who should be afraid of  _ him _ .

The base of the stairwell is more of the same; a long, bland hallway of smooth, featureless concrete, broken by only a couple of heavy metal doors. It’s empty, for the moment, though Bucky can still hear voices echoing distantly through the compound. He doesn’t know where he’s going, but he figures his best bet is to find whoever is shouting orders and get some answers. His movements are unhurried, and there’s a thrill of power humming through his veins; this is what a predator feels like, he thinks distantly, one who knows it’s prey is already helpless and it’s only a matter of time.

Up ahead, the voices become clear. “Upper level secure,” someone reports, followed by the crackle of a radio. “Sealing off upper levels and continuing search on lab levels.”

The voices are just around the next bend in the hallway, and Bucky peers around the corner to find three heavily armed guards clustered together around a door while one enters a passcode into a security panel. The guards are sloppy, and Bucky feels a sort of embarrassment on their behalf but also a vicious delight. He waits until he hears the click of the lock releasing and the first guard pulls open the door. Then Bucky takes a running start. There’s no hesitation and his hand is rock steady - by the time he’s crossed half of the distance between them two of the guards are on the ground with a bullet planted squarely between each of their eyebrows. The third guard hasn’t had time to process what happened, his hand still holding the thick edge of the door. Bucky grabs him by the back of the head, slamming it hard against the door, hard enough that he feels something crack and it leaves an imprint of thick, vicus blood on the edge of the door. Bucky drops the now limp body, catching the door before it hit the frame. He pauses for half a second to stare down at the three bodies - because they are all three bodies, there’s something about the sound of the third guard’s skull cracking when Bucky had slammed him into the door that Bucky  _ knows _ . He feels regret, but only a vague, hollow sense in the pit of his stomach and it has more to do with the fact that he might have gotten some useful information from the men first than with the fact that he had actually killed them. 

It’s only a moment’s pause though, then Bucky’s mind is already moving ahead.  _ Upper level secured _ the guard had said, which means downward Bucky goes. He slides through, leaving the bodies behind with a sense of much more important things ahead. He lets the door close behind him, listening to the lock click as it settles into its frame. He’s in another stairwell, this one even dimmer due to the lack of windows as the stairs lead down into what appears to be large subterranean complex of more plain concrete hallways. It feels uncannily like something out of a horror movie, except Bucky isn’t afraid that a monster is about to jump out at him. In fact, he has the unshakeable sense that he  _ is _ the monster. 

After all, he did just murder three men in cold blood, without thought, without hesitation. He knew nothing about those men, except that they stood between him and… and a man he doesn’t know, who he  _ thinks _ is somewhere in these tunnels. He should be terrified, he should be horrified, maybe disgusted. But he’s not. He doesn’t even regret it; he knows he’ll do the same to anyone else who tries to stop him from finding the man in the sketchbook. And, most importantly, he doesn’t have time to dwell on it. All he can do is act and hope these inexplicable instincts don’t lead him wrong.

He doesn’t meet any more guards, though he can hear snatches of voices echoing through the hallways. Twice he stops, pressing himself flat against a wall to avoid being spotted by a passing group of chatting men in lab coats who are clutching clipboards and looking anxious. Scientist. He wonders, absently, what they’re doing here, what this place really is. He half considers grabbing one and dragging him into one of the many empty rooms lining the hallway to demand answers, but there’s a gnawing sense of urgency in the pit of his stomach that says there’s no time.

The urgency causes him to move more quickly, less cautiously, barely pausing to look around corners before stalking forward. Something like panic is brewing in the pit of his stomach again, making everything around him feel somehow both blurred and too sharp, the still blaring siren too harsh in his ears and the flashing red light a painful assault to his eyes. He can’t stop. He has to find the man, before it’s too late. He doesn’t know how he knows, but he’s  _ running out of time! _

He hears himself snarl in a way that is distant and unreal, and a bullet bursts through the flashing red light above his head. It does nothing to actually reduce the overwhelming stimulus of light and sound around him, and does even less to help him find his target. But the brewing nausea in the pit of his stomach settles, just a little, and it brings the sturdy weight of the gun in his hand back into sharp focus, which he finds strangely reassuring.

But then he turns the next corner and comes face to face with a man - he lifts the gun again before he can process what he’s seeing, before he can take in the bruised face, the currently untrimmed goatee, or the wide brown eyes. He pulls the trigger, but his hand jerks just in time and the bullet lodges in the cement wall with a harmless shower of dust.

“Fuck!” the man shouts, recoiling back and throwing his hands up over his face so hard that he stumbles, his back hitting the wall and he just barely avoids falling over. He’s breathing so hard that it’s shaking his whole body, his eyes wide and showing white all the way around. He’s barefoot, which Bucky processes with a distracted sense of absurdity, and what had been a ridiculously expensive silk shirt is now torn shreds that hang loosely off of his shoulders, a bright blue glow shining through the thin fabric.

Bucky stops short, immediately lowering his gun. His heart and his stomach feel like they’re fighting for room in his throat and for a moment throwing up becomes a very real possibility as he realizes that he just almost shot the man who Steve had drawn so beautifully - so  _ lovingly _ . “It’s you,” he says stupidly. He can’t stop staring at the man, at the sharp angles of his face, the sturdy muscle of his arm, the soft brown of his eyes.

There’s an impulse brewing in his chest. Maybe a stupid one. Maybe one that under any other circumstances Bucky would have resisted for at least a dozen perfectly valid reasons. But before he can think it through, he’s surging forward. He presses the strange man back against the wall and cups his face - with the hand that isn’t holding a gun - and kisses him. The kiss is clumsy and awkward, and the other man winces just a little, but his hands end up fisted in the thick fabric of Bucky’s tactical vest; it’s dizzying but somehow so, so right and Bucky doesn’t want to break the kiss… except that they’re exposed, in enemy territory, and with their bodies pressed together like this Bucky is now horrifyingly aware of how much other man is bleeding.

“Well, hello to you too, soldier,” the man says with a crooked smirk when they finally break apart. He’s panting a little, and there’s fresh dribble of blood coming from the split in his lip, but he doesn’t seem to mind. “About damn time,” he adds, and Bucky thinks it’s supposed to be some kind of joke - he doesn’t actually sound annoyed, he sounds relieved and there’s a small, crooked lilt at the corners of his mouth now that isn’t a full smile but is somehow something more genuine. Bucky can’t stop staring, his stomach flipping at that look, that face, but also catching on the blood smearing the split in the man’s lower lip.

“Bucky?” the man pushes himself away from the wall, looking slightly unsteady on his feet but holding himself carefully, not quite leaning against Bucky’s chest. He seems entirely unafraid of Bucky’s presence now that he’s recovered from his surprise, despite the fact that Bucky had just come within inches of shooting the man in the face and then kissed him until he literally bled. “Are you okay? Where’s Steve?”

“Safe and sound back home in Brooklyn,” Bucky mutters automatically, not wanting to think about the idea of his stubborn, foolhardy Stevie in a place like this. But he can’t dwell on that right now; he has to swallow hard and it feels uncomfortably like the ground is shifting beneath his feet. Staring into the bruised but happy face in front of him is the only thing keeping him steady, and Bucky is immeasurably relieved that the man is still holding onto his vest.

But then the man pauses, his smile dropping into a frown. “Wait, Steve isn’t with you? What about the others?” His hand releases its grip on Bucky’s vest, but he doesn’t move away, reaching up to grip Bucky’s shoulder instead. It occurs to Bucky, distantly, that this whole situation is too bizarre and he maybe should be uncomfortable with so much touching from this stranger, but he actually really just wants to scoop the man up in his arms and make a run for it. And, after all, Bucky is the one who initiated the kiss.

Bucky swallows and shakes his head. “I’m alone,” he says. “Well,” he amends, not really wanting to but figuring full disclosure is best at the moment, “there was a… when I woke up, some guy in armor, but he’s-”

“Armor?” the man seems to perk up. “Who was in the armor?”

Bucky bites his lip and shakes his head. “I… I couldn’t see a face, it was covered. But… he- it wasn’t moving, I don’t think-”

The man opens his mouth, closes it again, and swallows, visibly shaking off whatever he’d been about to say. Bucky can actually see a too rapid progression of thoughts flashing through the man’s eyes and being shoved aside for later. “Right. Okay. Just us. No backup. We can do this. You’re looking… well armed, so there’s that.” The man’s babbling; he isn’t saying anything helpful, his hands are shaking, and the more Bucky looks at him the more unsettling the stains showing through on his ripped shirt are.

The man is radiating anxious energy and the words he’s rambling are supposed to be reassuring but they sound hollow and insincere. He lets go of Bucky, leaning heavily against the wall as he starts a slow but determined limp. He doesn’t look to see if Bucky’s following, but he’s still muttering like he expects Bucky to be listening. And, of course, Bucky does follow. It’s awkward; their pace is slow and Bucky isn’t sure what to do besides hover by the man’s shoulder. It’s hard to watch him limping, to see the way his mouth is a tight grimace of pain, but Bucky isn’t sure what to do about it.

“Hey, uh, can I ask you a question?” Bucky asks after they’ve made it about twenty feet down the hallway. The stranger’s rambling has mostly died off, presumably because he has to focus on his labored breathing - those are definitely broken ribs he’s got one arm wrapped around. Impulsively, Bucky tucks the gun back in its holster so that he can wrap an arm under the man’s armpits to help support him. It’s just assistance, he tells himself, practical; it shouldn’t feel as intimate as it does. 

The man’s steps falter, almost like he’d half forgotten that Bucky was there, but he doesn’t push Bucky’s arm away and he shrugs awkwardly. “Yeah, sure, ask away,” he grunts.

It’s stupid, and even worse, Bucky feels the faint heat of a blush rising to his cheeks. “Uh,” he fumbles, and if he wasn’t pretty sure that without his supporting arm the man would fall over, Bucky would be rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment. “What’s your name?”

The man stops dead in his tracks and it almost throws Bucky off balance. The man blinks at him several times, then sags back against the wall like his knees have given out on him. He makes a strangled sound that could equally be a hysterical laugh or a strangled sob. “My name,” he chokes, rubbing a hand over his face and half bending forward so that his forehead ends up resting against Bucky’s chest - there are guns, and knives, strapped there and it can’t be comfortable, but he’s still making the same choked laughing-sobbing sound. It’s… kind of terrifying. “Fuck, you don’t even know my name!”

Bucky has to adjust his grip so that he can hoist the man back up by the shoulders, holding him gently but firmly against the wall so that he can see the man’s face. His mouth looks like he’s laughing but there are tears in the corners of his eyes and the more Bucky looks the more this man looks like absolute shit - like he hasn’t slept in at least three days and he’s about to collapse under the strain of prolonged pain and fear.

Bucky can’t- He crowds in closer, close enough to wrap both arms around the man, keeping him both carefully pinned and fully supported between the wall and Bucky’s body. He cups the back of the man’s head, guiding it to rest in the crook of Bucky’s neck and shoulder “I-I’m sorry,” he says, anxiety and guilt building inside of him. He just wants to calm the man down, to reassure him, to somehow make even a little of the pain he’s feeling go away. “I didn’t mean to- I just, I don’t really know what’s going on here, and I’m so fucking glad I found you but you’re kind of bleeding all over me and I don’t even know where we are, or who these people are but I killed three of them back there and-”

The man takes a shuddering breath and pulls back enough so that Bucky can see his face. He swipes away the tear tracks on his face hastily and his lips turn up into something that’s trying very hard to be a smile but failing utterly. “Hey, easy,” he says, like he himself hadn’t just been having a melt down too. He cups Bucky’s face in both hands, his fingers stroking shakily over the short growth of beard on Bucky’s cheeks. “Okay, I’m sorry, it’s okay. We’ll be fine. You and me, we’ve got this.”

“We do?” Bucky says around the tight obstruction in his throat.

“Absolutely. I’m a genius and you’re a badass, these chumps have no chance.” 


	6. Chapter 5

There are several things in the world that Tony hates. Nazis are pretty high on the list. Being kidnapped? Definitely not a fan. Torture is, well, torture, and Tony is incredibly grateful that it hasn’t been worse, but it has also been uncreative and kind of borning. But the worst, the absolute worst, is incompetent people playing with very dangerous and poorly made tech.

The thing about being tortured by someone who wants you to  _ do _ something, is that they have to be careful not break anything too important - and Tony is making a point of not thinking too hard about how intimately familiar with that truth he is. Tony’s ribs are killing him and his face is swollen, but he can still see and, next time they’re stupid enough to actually sit him at a computer, he can still type. Well, ideally they won’t get a chance, but this has been Tony’s third escape attempt and he’s further than he’d gotten before but he’s trying not to count his chickens yet. The goons have been getting increasingly impatient and Tony’s willing to bet that they’ll be getting ready to launch soon, with or without his help. The good news is that means they’ve been distracted and were stupid enough to give Tony - another - opening; the bad news is if Tony doesn’t manage to shut them down before he gets caught again at least half of Manhattan Island is going to become a HAZMAT zone.

Which has been all Tony can think about while he limps his way through the maze of poorly lit underground hallways. His options are severely limited, and escape isn’t one of them. The best he could do is stall and sabotage, call for help and hope to high hell the team gets here soon.

Until he ran face first into the barrel of a gun and found Bucky at the other end of it. Bucky, who had kissed first and asked Tony’s  _ name  _ later. Bucky who is here, on his own, without Steve, without the team, without backup of any kind. Bucky who is armed to the teeth and has definitely already spilt some white supremacist blood even though he clearly has no idea what’s actually going on. Tony doesn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or scream. 

But Bucky said there’s a suit nearby. Maybe, just maybe, if Tony can get the damn EMP shielding down - which he was going to do anyway - it’ll still be functional enough to help them get the hell out of here. Tony doesn’t tell Bucky how slim their chances are, though he’s probably not pulling off the  _ we’ve got this _ vibe he’s aiming for with anything that even approaches believability. Tony has no idea how long it’s been since he slept - there’s no way to keep time in an underground bunker with no windows. He’s probably lost a lot more blood than is advisable, and just breathing is so exhausting right now that he wants to cry. 

And Bucky is here… beautiful and lethal and strong as he is… Tony is so fucking relieved to not be alone any more, but at the same time wants to shove Bucky toward the nearest exit. He desperately wants to know how the fuck Bucky ended up out here alone, where the hell Steve and the team are, and what could have possibly possessed anyone to think this was a good idea? But the wide eyed confusion written all over Bucky’s face tells him he won’t be getting answers to those questions, at least not until the rest of this shithole of a situation is dealt with.

It’s not the priority right now anyway, it can’t be. Rationally, their chances are better - marginally - together. And Bucky might barely even know who Tony is at the moment but there isn’t a chance in hell that he’ll be convinced to leave Tony behind, even if Tony wanted to invest energy in trying to send him away.

So, couples sabotage it is; it’s probably not the worst first date Tony’s taken Bucky on.

“First thing first,” Tony says. Bucky still has him pressed up against the wall and Tony is definitely not going to admit that without Bucky’s support he’d probably be on his ass on the ground right now, but it’s also reassuring to be able to feel that Bucky is real and solid and with him. “I’m Tony. I’m brilliant, rich, and also your boyfriend. I’d say I hope that doesn’t freak you out, but you kissed me hello, so it really shouldn’t be too much of a shock.”

“Tony, right,” Bucky repeats slowly, like he’s tasting the name, trying out the feel of it. He also looks a little bit like he’s considering trying to taste the back of Tony’s throat too, which is flattering and under different circumstances Tony would definitely be on board. Unfortunately, they don’t have that luxury right now, and Bucky seems to realize that. He leans just a little bit closer, not quite rest his forehead against Tony’s while he takes a deep breath, and then he steps back and re-draws his gun. “Time to go,” Bucky says, and Bucky’s command voice may not hold the same inspiring grandeur that Steve’s does, but boy is it still effective.

Unfortunately, Tony’s pretty sure Bucky means ‘go’ as in ‘leave this terrible hellhole and go home’ which would be wonderful, really it would, Tony wants to do that with every throbbing fiber of his exhausted, overwrought body, but it’s not an option. “I’d love that, really, I super would,” he tells Bucky, because he doesn’t want Bucky to think he’s some kind of crazy person who is  _ enjoying _ this, “but we can’t.” It takes effort, so much effort to pull himself fully back onto his feet, to push Bucky away - not enough that he’s out of reach, because Tony  _ is _ going to want Bucky on hand to catch him when he inevitably falls over, but enough that he can move without Bucky pinning him to the wall. 

“We can-” Bucky starts, getting that stubborn jut to his jaw. Tony can’t let him get started; he forces himself to stand up though he can’t quite manage to un-hunch his shoulders, and he has to wrap a bracing arm around his ribs. Tony manages one step without falling over, and only wobbles a little on the second step; he considers that a resounding success. But Bucky grabs his shoulder - carefully, which Tony appreciates - and it’s not like Tony was going to outrun him anyway. “Look, I don’t think they know I’m here,” Bucky says. “You’re the one who set off the alarm, right?”

Tony huffs. “Technically, no, I did not set off the alarm,” he says. He’d been out of his cell for a full ten minutes before the siren started. “I’m assuming that the moron they left to guard me did not appreciate getting hit with his own stupid rolling pin.” It’s unfairly difficult to walk and talk at the same time, but Tony does appreciate the distraction.

Bucky nods, and that’s definitely the jaw-clench-of-stubbornness. “Then we should be able to get back out the same way I came in. It wasn’t hard.”

Tony snorts out a laugh before he can catch himself, and fuck does that hurt but it’s worth it. “Not for you, I guess,” he mutters to himself; usually when Bucky’s showing off he’s at least doing it on purpose. “And Natasha was complaining about your skills deteriorating.” Tony can see the surprise, confusion, and curiosity moving across Bucky’s face, but that is a whole can of worms that they do not have time to examine right now. “Anyway,” Tony cuts in, before Bucky can ask any of his brewing questions, “we can’t leave. Not without disabling the bomb.”

That stops Bucky up short. “Bomb?” he asks incredulously.

Well, at least Tony fully has his attention now. Bucky is thrown off balance enough that Tony can start walking again, Bucky’s restraining hand now more of a support as he trails after Tony distractedly. “It’s insulting, really,” Tony says, because he’s been brewing about this for... probably at least three days now. He takes the next left turn they reach and he’s pretty sure they’re headed in the right direction, though being dragged down seemingly endless bland hallways that look exactly the same with a mild concussion is not particularly conducive to memorizing directions. “These asshats didn’t even want me to  _ build _ the bomb.” Tony grits his teeth as they make their painfully slow progress. “They just wanted me to fine tune the targeting. Justin Hammer could’ve done that. I mean, he would have done it terribly, but still.”

The more Tony keeps Bucky distracted, the better. He’s pretty sure if he gave Bucky time to process the amount of danger they’re in, he’d try to just pick Tony up and carry him out. Which, under different circumstances, would be kind of hot - both Bucky and Steve have employed a similar technique for getting Tony out of his lab when they think he needs to sleep. But right now the stakes are too high, and getting thrown over Bucky’s shoulder would not help Tony’s broken ribs.

Luckily, Bucky has also given in to the fact that they’re moving - even if it isn’t in the direction Bucky wants to be going - and he’s fully committed himself to helping hold Tony up. He’s got his right arm wound under Tony’s armpits now, half carrying him, to be completely honest. He’s got his gun in his metal hand and his gaze is making regular sweeps of their surroundings, fully on alert. Frankly, the fact that no one has come across them, even accidentally, is a whole new level of incompetency for these goons, but realistically it is only a matter of time.

“Did you do it?” Bucky asks, peering around the corner of the next branch in the hallway before he’ll let Tony move forward into it.

Tony manages to make his wheeze for breath sound  _ almost _ like an annoyed huff and tells himself that he’s clutching at Bucky’s waist with one hand because he missed Bucky and touching him is nice. “No, of course not. I don’t do that any-” Tony says, but something cold and sick twists in the pit of the stomach, and he has to sharply cut off his words along with the intrusive thought of  _ if Bucky really knew- _ . He shakes his head hard, coughing a little to clear his throat. “Even without me doing anything to fix their shitty tech, they can still do a lot of damage. They want to target it precisely, because they’re racist and do not understand how science works, but with the navigational system they’ve already got they can still hit a lot of dense population. It’s a big bomb.”

“Where are they aiming it?” Bucky asks, and Tony suspects that Bucky is now trying to distract him, but it’s working so Tony goes with it.

“Harlem. But if it hits the city anywhere it’s going to a lot of damage. Impact aside, they’re loading it with a chemical payload, and that-” Tony stops and shakes his head; he’s not sure he  _ can _ describe the sort of devastation that would cause, and it doesn’t matter anyway, because he isn’t going to let it happen.

“Chemical payload?” Bucky asks.

“Yeah. You, uh, you know about mustard gas, right?” A particularly sharp stab of pain catches him off guard and he stumbles a step. Bucky’s arm tightens around him and it’s almost painful but it keeps Tony on his feet so it’s worth it.

Bucky nods. “Yeah, I… I heard the stories,” he says grimly.

“Well, it’s a little like that, except worse.” It’s Bucky’s turn to stumble a step, and Tony doesn’t want to look at the amount of horror flashing across Bucky’s face; Bucky may not remember ever seeing mustard gas used, but the  _ stories _ had probably been plentiful and horrific. At least there’s no chance that Bucky will try to make them leave without stopping the bomb now.

Tony takes advantage of Bucky’s misstep to peer around the next corner first, and  _ thank fuck _ he knows that door. Unfortunately, he also knows the two goons guarding the door. It’s a heady relief to finally, after three goddamn tries, reach this stupid door. “Give me a gun,” Tony whispers urgently, leaning back against the wall so they’re out of sight of the guards. He keeps his voice so low there’s barely any sound, but he knows Bucky will hear him. 

Bucky reaches for one of the guns, but he hesitates, uncertainly flicking across his face.

“I designed at least 80% of the gear you’re wearing,” Tony snaps before he can catch himself, though he does just barely keep enough presence of mind to still whisper. He knows it isn’t fair; Bucky doesn’t know him, doesn’t know his skills, and objectively it’s probably a good thing that Bucky would hesitate to give a gun to someone who is technically a stranger and, as far as he knows, a civilian. But Tony ran out of patience about twenty minutes after being shoved into the back of a SUV with a disgusting, suffocating bag over his head. He forces himself to take a breath, reaching out instinctively to try to smooth the taken aback look off of Bucky’s face. “I know how to use it,” he says, trying to gentle his whisper and sound reassuring.

Bucky bites his lip, but nods and hands over the gun. While Tony pops out the magazine and checks the gun, Bucky leans out around the corner to access what they’re up against. “So, that door is the target?” he mutters, and there’s a wry note to his voice. Bucky’s doing remarkably well handling what is no doubt an overwhelmingly confusing and stressful situation, but he crowds Tony up against the wall again, keeping them out of sight and his voice well below the volume of the still ringing sirens.

Tony doesn’t push Bucky away, a little relieved to have the support and a moment longer to brace himself. He can just catch a glimpse of the guards around the corner if he cranes his neck, and the guards look both bored and annoyed, shooting occasional glances up at the nearest flashing siren. Tony is caught between feeling professionally insulted and relieved that these goons are apparently more concerned with the annoying noise than actually catching their escaped prisoner. “Look, behind that door is a generator and a bunch of computers that-” Tony cuts himself off - Bucky is giving him that blank confused look that Tony usually loves and will take advantage of by endeavoring to clear it with hours of technobabble, but right now they’re short on time. “Doesn’t matter. The point is, it’s the only thing in this shithole that these quacks actually managed to get working. And if we can get in there, I can break some shit, fix some other shit, and we can call for backup.” And boy, Tony can’t wait to get his hands on that damn generator.

Bucky has an almost dopey expression, just for a moment, a crooked little half smile on his lips. But then the smile drops and Bucky’s game face is back. “I go first,” he says firmly, and Tony can actually see him trying to impersonate Steve, which is inappropriately hilarious, all the more so because he’s doing it in a whisper. “I’ll take out the guards, then you can follow.”

Okay, the fact that Bucky doesn’t actually know anything about him right now can only stretch Tony’s patience so far. He scowls, despite how much it hurts his swollen face and split lip. He’s about to give Bucky a very passionate whispered telling off, but Bucky’s head jerks, his attention shifting back in the direction they came. It takes about a three second delay before six heavily armed goons in kevlar come around the corner toward them. Tony recognizes at least three of the men with an intimacy that makes his heartrate speed up and his ribs ache.

They only have a split second before the goons process their presence. They don’t have any good options, pinned between these goons and the two guards on the door, but Bucky makes a decision for them both. He shoves Tony around the corner into the hallway with the guards and plants himself firmly in front of Tony, managing to shield most of Tony’s body with the bulk of his own.

Tony may be exhausted and off his game, but he has enough of his wits left to fire at the guards around Bucky. He fires blindly; the guards hit the ground, but there’s no time to focus, no time to check on them, because the other six are rushing toward them headlong now. Bucky tries to peek around the juncture of the hallways, but at least two of the goons fire and it’s pure luck that Bucky gets his metal arm up in time to deflect the shots.

Tony swears, violent and instinctive; he is just so, so tired of these assholes. He grabs Bucky’s belt, yanking him back to the temporary shelter around the edge of the corner. Bucky doesn’t have any gear of his own - they’d had some discussions about the possibility of him joining the team for short, simple missions, but they’d never actually agreed to do it - and it looks like he’s wearing a combination of Clint, Steve, and Natasha’s spares. In fact, he’s pretty sure that those are Clint’s cargo pants, which means- Tony starts digging through every pocket he can reach and comes up with two of Clint’s explosive arrowheads. He makes a small sound of triumph and ignores Bucky’s confused expression as he activates the arrowheads and launches them as hard as he can around the corner.

There’s a blinding flash and a deafening bang, the whole corridor shaking with the percussion that almost drowns out the screams of the men who got hit. Some part in the back of Tony’s mind automatically takes a few notes on future improvements.

Bucky simultaneously pulls Tony back away from the corner, while also peeking around himself. Tony’s willing to bet there isn’t much to see through the smoke and torn concrete. Tony leaves him to it; he has bigger concerns. “Fucking finally!” he mutters to himself, launching himself at the now unguarded door. He has to lean in so close that his forehead almost rests against the doorframe to focus on the keypad. Luckily, it’s easy enough to hack; even these dimwits will rush to check out the source of an explosion, and it’s not like it’ll be hard for them to figure out why Tony would head for this room.

Tony is focused on the keypad. So focused that he almost misses the low groan coming from the ground behind him. He half glances toward the sound; one of the guards is twitching despite there already being a bullet hole in his chest and thigh. The guard’s gun is well out of reach, but he’s slowly, laboriously trying to stretch toward it.

Bucky shoots the man in the head. It’s so sudden and so close that Tony jumps - he hadn’t even noticed Bucky coming up behind him. Bucky looks pale and his flesh hand is shaking slightly, but he pushes Tony aside, apparently not noticing the fact that Tony had already gotten the keypad unlocked as he just grabs it with his metal hand and rips the whole thing off, taking the locking mechanism it’s attached to with it. Tony opens his mouth to point out that it was already unlocked, but Bucky just yanks the door open and shoves him inside.

The door slams shut behind them and Bucky slides down it to sprawl on the floor. It’s not a big room, most of the space crowded with banks of servers, whirring and glowing as they work, and connected by a haphazard tangle of wires and cables. Through the massive window - some kind of cheap plastic that’s half clouded over and heavily scratched - is a clear view of the missile silo, complete with massive missile, because of course these goons feel the need to overcompensate. 

This moment has been three days coming and Tony gleefully starts digging into the set up, ripping out wires left and right. A basic smash and crash will get most of the job done, but if he can reroute a few of the servers he can hopefully not only reconnect the signal, but boost it.

He’s interrupted by the clatter of Bucky’s gun hitting the ground. Bucky’s face is stark white, his eyes too wide and his breath coming in sharp, short pants. He’s hunched up against the door, his knees drawn up to his chest and his hands dangling limply between them; his flesh hand is shaking violently and the responsive plates of his metal arm are shifting at an alarming rate.

“Bucky?” Tony asks. He’s torn between the need to comfort Bucky and the pressing need to get the signal out before more goons show up to ruin his day  _ again _ . “You with me?”

“I-I shot him. In the face,” Bucky says, his voice nothing more than a shaky mutter and Bucky might not even realize that he’s speaking aloud. “I mean, I… I’ve killed before, right? I have. I went to war. I don’t remember it, but I got drafted, and I… I know how to use all of this-” his voice cuts off with a harsh sound and gestures almost violently toward the gear he’s wearing. “And there were those others, earlier. That’s four, at least. I shot them point blank. I don’t even know  _ why _ ! I don’t know who these people are, except that they hurt you and you’re somehow important.” Bucky jerks, his head slamming back against the door behind him. “What am I doing here? What’s wrong with me?”

“Bucky!” Tony interrupts the tirade sharply, his voice harsher than he intends. Comforting Bucky wins out and he crouches down in front of Bucky, resting his hands on Bucky’s knees with exaggerated gentleness. It hurts like fucking hell to balance himself in a crouch, but that’s not what matters now. “I need you to breathe for me, pal,” he says, jostling Bucky in an effort to draw his full attention. “Focus up, come on.” 

Bucky gasps in a deep, shuddering breath that makes his whole chest vibrate. His eyes are wet but at least he’s actually looking at Tony now. 

“Look, if it makes you feel better, these guys are all neo-nazis. Because apparently once wasn’t enough,” Tony adds. He doesn’t expect to get Bucky to laugh, but even his terrible sense of humor has proven to lighten stressful moods in the past.

“ _ Neo _ -nazis,” Bucky mouths, blinking hard several times, a little of incredulity come through his panic. He’s still breathing too hard and too fast, but his expression is clearing, his gaze sharpening. The panic is starting to pass, but Tony still desperately wants to pull Bucky into his arms; if only he had his damn suit he could fly Bucky out of here, somewhere safe, preferably the Tower where the world’s most advanced security system is run by the world’s smartest AI and there are lots of fluffy blankets. Unfortunately, that isn’t an option. Yet.

“Okay, listen,” Tony says, hoping that Bucky has broken through the panic enough for logic and off putting humor to get through to him. “This sucks, I get it. I mean, I don’t really. This fucking sucks for me, and I cannot possibly imagine what it’s like for you.” To be fair, Tony isn’t feeling all that calm himself, but he squeezes Bucky’s knee and hopes it’s reassuring. “Look, we are really short on time here, and this thing I’m doing?” he half gestures back toward the server banks. “It’s pretty serious life or death shit. So I need to finish it, and fast. But I also need you to be okay, so can you just… just sit there and breathe for me, okay? Two minutes, maybe less. Just keep breathing.” There are very few things in the world that are worth it enough to make Tony let go of Bucky right now, unfortunately, one of those things is the risk of half of New York getting decimated by a bomb full of toxic gas. So he pulls away reluctantly, forcing himself back to his feet; he has to bite down hard on his lip against the pain, and pause for a moment while a wave of dizziness washes over him.

But then he’s back to the thing he’s good at. A few servers smashed, a few others rerouted - there’s blood on Tony’s hands and it’s getting hard to see out of his swollen eye, but he ignores those things, because this is a thing that he can do. In this whole terrible shitfest, this one thing he is fully confident about. If he can just get a signal out to JARVIS - to anyone, really, but JARVIS has the broadest reach and he’s undoubtedly already looking in close to the right place if there really is one of Tony’s suits in the area. 

Bucky is breathing more easily now, and he even manages to give Tony a tiny, shaky smile when Tony borrows one of his knives. 

And then, Tony’s done it. He thinks. He’s pretty sure. He tries not to celebrate too soon as he lets himself drop down onto the concrete beside Bucky. “You’ve got a phone on you, right?” he asks, holding out a hand. “Come on, pony up.” That’s one of the rules, Bucky always has a phone on him; it won’t always be helpful, especially if Bucky doesn’t remember enough about cellphones to pull it out and use it, but he should always have one, just in case. Of course, that failsafe is useless if he falls through an EMP field that knocks out all technology. But the field is down now and if anyone can get it back online, Tony can.

Bucky blinks at him blankly, then shoots a glance around the room. “Where would I- I don’t see one-” he fumbles, looking both confused and vaguely embarrassed; it’s terrible but also adorable and Tony can’t resist the urge to press a chaste kiss to Bucky’s lips as he leans in to start digging through Bucky’s pockets.

“Rectangular thing,” Tony explains, because talking makes things easier even when it’s not actually helpful, “about the size of your hand, made of plastic and glass.” Then he finds it, the familiar smooth lines of the latest Starkphone. “Thank god,” he mutters, pulling it out.

Bucky stares at Tony, still looking bemused while Tony manages to jump some power into the phone and starts booting it up. It’ll take a few minutes, and Tony can feel every second ticking past them - everything is taking too long, and the goons will have to get their shit together soon, and their chances of successfully staying barricaded in this room until backup arrives are slim at best. “Come on, come on,” Tony mutters. Distantly, he feels Bucky’s hand curl loosely around his ankle, a grounding, reassuring gesture and Tony drops his own hand to pat Bucky’s distractedly.

Finally, the screen lights up and Tony starts typing as fast as he possibly can. Of course, the secret, off the grid villain lair doesn’t have wifi, but he just needs to reach a satellite and-

Suddenly Bucky goes stiff, then lurches to his feet. He shoves Tony out of the way and grabs for one of the freestanding racks, dragging it in front of the door with an unholy screeching of metal on concrete. The rack is heavy, and Bucky has to plant his metal shoulder against it to make it move, but as soon as he has it in front of the door he goes back for a second rack, wedging it against the first one. It won’t hold for long, but it’ll buy them a few minutes.

Of course, they’re thoroughly trapped now - they were trapped before the barricade, since there’s only one door into the room and the hallway outside is a dead end which is undoubtedly now filling armed goons. Bucky paces over to the window, clearly assessing their lack of options; the nearest catwalk in the missile silo is twenty feet down and well to the left of the window. Bucky could jump it, and it’s unlikely that the goons will think to come at them from that direction, but Tony is not so confident about his own athletic abilities at the moment, and then there’s the matter of breaking the thick plastic filling the window.

Bucky’s apparently considering it, because he’s still assessing the window when he says, “Tony, we have to go.”

“Yeah, yeah, coming,” Tony mutters absently; if Bucky’s got a plan, he’ll go along with it, but he’s got to make sure the signal is going through first. He boosts the GPS, sending out his own signature code that will be sure to ping JARVIS’ radar. “Jay, come on, baby, pick up,” he pleads. But the signal is weak, and while Tony is sure that JARVIS is looking there’s no telling how far out he is.

There’s a pounding on the door. It’s forceful enough to make the racks Bucky shoved in front of the door shudder and it sounds like they’re using some kind of battering ram; the barricade is holding for now, but it won’t last long. Bucky is still at the window, peering out into the silo below, counting potential combatants, accessing routes, and calculating their odds. Judging from the expression on Bucky’s face, he doesn’t like the results he’s coming up with, but Tony could have already told him that. Stealth is out of the question. Maybe they could shoot their way through to a door, but then what? Even with all of Bucky’s gear they are wildly outnumbered and outgunned. 

“Tony!” Bucky snaps, panic sharpening the edges of his voice.

“Wait, hold on,” Tony insists, still focused on the phone. If he can just confirm a connection to JARVIS- fuck, if he could just hear JARVIS’ voice for a second… anything to assure him that someone is coming, that even if he and Bucky can’t make it out of this someone will stop that damn bomb-

“We don’t have time to wait!” Bucky’s voice is rising to match the pounding against the door and the racks that are starting to give a little, scraping across the floor.

Tony grits his teeth and moves over to Bucky. He pulls Bucky in close, sparing only half of a second to savor the reassuring warmth of him. “Listen,” Tony says, purposefully keeping his voice low but serious. “We probably aren’t going to get out of here without help. They won’t shoot me -” he pauses and amends, “too badly - they still need me. But you-” He knows it’s a fruitless effort before he starts, but he has to try.

“Not a chance in hell,” Bucky cuts him off, unsurprisingly. “I am not leaving you behind.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Tony snap - hypocritically, it’s not like he’d leave Bucky behind if their situations were reversed; it’s one of those stupid fatal flaws that apparently is a defining qualification for superheroing. “But also, I’m not saying you have to. You don’t have to  _ leave _ okay? You just need to keep this safe.” Tony holds up the phone, waving it in Bucky’s face. Unfortunately, they only have one even partially guaranteed option for that. He grips Bucky’s metal wrist gently, pressing the hidden release button that will open the access panel in the forearm. He doesn’t even have to look to find it - he is the one who installed it, after all - but Bucky startles when the access panel releases, his eyes going wide and Tony belatedly realizes he maybe should have warned Bucky about that. “Sorry,” Tony mumbles, but he doesn’t waste time before reaching into the arm to delicately shift a couple of wires out of the way. Bucky startles again, and Tony knows that the sensation isn’t causing him any pain, but it is undoubtedly weird and unsettling. “They are definitely going to want to break this if they find it,” Tony says, talking for a distraction as much as anything while he works. There’s a space that’s just the perfect size against the outside casing and Tony slides the phone into it, double checking to make sure that it isn’t putting pressure on anything important. “And there’s nothing to stop them from…” he has to stop, to swallow, “from getting rid of you if they catch you.” He has to admit the possibility, but he doesn’t have to accept the statistical probability. “I really, really need for them to not do either one of those things,” he says firmly. “Just… don’t let them get you.”

Tony checks once more to make sure the phone is securely tucked away and snaps the panel closed. Bucky’s expression still looks caught between stubbornness and confusion, and they don’t have time for this; Tony should be shoving Bucky through the window and doing his best to hold off the goons that are going to break the door down any second now. But he can’t resist just one more indulgence, just one more moment- he cups Bucky’s face in both hands, holding his gaze seriously. Tony knows he looks like shit, he’s not entirely sure how he’s even still on his feet, but it doesn’t matter. He leans in, resting their foreheads together and closing his eyes. He doesn’t kiss Bucky, because if he did he doesn’t think he’d be able to stop, so he just holds him for a moment, taking a deep, shuddering breath. “That phone is going to bring back up, soon,” he says, his voice low and intimate in the close air between them; because he believes in JARVIS, he believes in Steve, and the team, and they  _ are going _ to come. “All you have to do is keep that phone safe, stay alive, and be somewhere sort of near to me.” He takes another breath, leaning closer, and his lips unconsciously find Bucky’s temple. “Just stay alive and keep that safe, okay? Promise me.”

“I’m not planning to die,” Bucky says, sounding almost defensive about it, and he’s definitely back to full Rogersian stubbornness.

“Great, good to know,” Tony agrees. He forces himself to pull back; forces himself to smile, which is a little easier and incongruously too soft, too tender. “I’m feeling super confident,” he lies.

Bucky eyes the window again. “How do you feel about jumping two stories into a nest of neo-nazis?”

Tony doesn’t get the chance to answer, because with a terrifying shriek one of the racks barricading the door topples over and smashes to the floor. The second rack screeches, the metal scraping against the concrete as it’s forced back enough to shove the door away from its frame, bit by deafening bit.

Bucky is standing between Tony and the door before Tony can even process him moving. His biggest gun is gripped in both hands and pointed toward the door, his stance wide and sturdy and his flesh hand is now rock steady.

“Fuck, you’re hot,” Tony mutters with an uncontrollable and wildly inappropriate grin. Tony relishes a sense of satisfaction at the equally inappropriate blush that colors Bucky’s cheeks, but there isn’t time to savor it because Bucky is pushing him back toward the window. It’s a lateral move into a bigger fire, really, though it’s better than doing  _ nothing _ Tony supposes.

But they don’t get the chance to try.

The pounding at the door stops and it settles back into its frame. Tony could swear he hears the boots outside retreating, which doesn’t make any sense until-

Gas. Tony smells it only a second before he sees the green colored smoke billowing in through the crack at the bottom of the door, and more in through the vent near the ceiling. Tony’s pretty sure it isn’t lethal, but it is fast acting and he swears as he clutches desperately at Bucky. 

They’re going to get Bucky. It’s too late, there’s nothing for them to do, nowhere for Bucky to go. He can’t-

Everything goes dark.


	7. Chapter 6

There is… a very big rocket.

Bucky is hovering on the very edges of consciousness, his vision blurry and his head feels like it’s full of three pounds of cotton. He can’t move, which he’s pretty sure would be terrifying except for the numbness that’s still making him feel drowsy and heavy.  He’s half laying on his side, his arms locked into restraints behind his back preventing him from laying flat. The concrete beneath him is cold and hard, and he very much  _ wants _ to move.

But for the moment all he can do is stare up at the smooth metal of the rocket towering above him. It’s so huge, overwhelmingly so from his position on the floor at its base. How can people make something that big, with the intention of blowing it up? How can people even… how many people is this thing going to kill? Maybe Bucky is some kind of crazy, badass assassin in the future he’s forgotten; but right now, he doesn’t know any of that. Right now he’s just a kid from Brooklyn. He’s overwhelmed, out of his depth. He wants to go home. Steve’s out there somewhere, maybe somewhere that Bucky’s supposed to call  _ home _ . He wants to be there, he wants to be there with Tony, and with Steve. Maybe they have a bed, big enough to hold them all but they can lay snuggled up together anyway, a soft bed, with lots of pillows, where he could hold Tony, safe and far away from these crazy assholes and their bombs.

Speaking of Tony, it’s a relief to hear his voice - a little too loud, a little too rapid - from somewhere just out of Bucky’s range of sight. “You know, I’m really not a fan of the looming. Or the guns.” Tony is rambling, and Bucky can’t see him but he can picture him, clear as day in his mind, waving his arms in grandiose and distracting gestures, every movement edged with frenzy. “Seriously, I’m really not subtle about that. You know, guns being pointed at me, kind of a thing. Also, super not a fan of authority, so all that blustering? Not helpful.” 

Bucky wonders, distantly, if their captors realize that Tony is stalling, or if they can hear how absolutely terrified he is.

“Just shut up and get to work!” A gruff voice snaps. The words are immediately followed by a meaty thud, and that’s enough to push away the lingering haze of the drugs and galvanize Bucky into moving.

He manages to roll up onto his knees, but his movement his abruptly halted by the hard metal of a gun being pressed to his temple. He immediately goes very still, but the metal arm is making a low whirring sound and he can feel the inner mechanisms shifting - it’s an unsettling feeling, especially now that Bucky has seen  _ inside _ of the thing, to know that there is  _ machinery _ in there and that it can move without his consciously telling it to. Except that something internal, instinctive tells him that he could use the arm to break the restraints; just like the fence outside of the compound, he could snap the flimsy metal of the cuffs with almost no effort.

It’s so tempting; these assholes are stupid. He could snap the restraints and grab the gun before the goon holding it could even blink. Except he can’t see Tony. He can’t see most of the room, but there are at least eight goons in his field of vision, and there’s no telling how many more are behind him, how many are pointing guns at Tony. It’s a little surprising to realize that he isn’t worried about himself - he doesn’t feel threatened by the gun against his temple at all, he’s entirely concerned about Tony.

“Hey, Tony? Your friends are real assholes,” Bucky says. He hunches in on himself, wills his metal arm to stay still, and keeps his eyes on the floor, making himself look as small and cowed as he possibly can; something about it feels uncomfortably familiar, almost natural, and that sets a whole chain of fear-rage-hatred cascading through him that almost blows his submissive act.

He hears a soft huff of a laugh; it’s Tony, and it comes from somewhere about ten feet behind him and to his left. Carefully Bucky tries to twist his head around, desperately wanting to catch sight of Tony.

“Watch it,” growls one of the goons grouped around Bucky. The warning is punctuated by a sharp kick to the gut with a steel toed boot that knocks Bucky back to the ground, his face scraping against the concrete as his whole body tries to curl around his desperately spasming diaphragm. Vaguely he hears Tony shout something - angry and scared - and another thud followed by Tony’s pained grunt that probably indicates he’s getting a similar treatment.

It’s actually surprisingly easy to get his breath back - he’s again hit by the unsettling sensation that he’s had too much practice with situations like this. But he can’t think about that right now. He plays up his injury, panting roughly like he can still barely breathe, and manages to writhe around on the concrete enough that when he pushes himself back to his knees he’s turned around to see the rest of the room. Sure enough, Tony is roughly where Bucky had estimated him to be, on his knees in a position roughly mirroring Bucky’s but with a fresh trickle of blood running down his temple.

Tony gives Bucky a shaky smile that manages to convey relief, fear, and rage all at once. “Hey sweetheart,” Tony rasps - he actually is visibly struggling to breathe, and Bucky is pretty sure it’s not an act. “Believe it or not, this is not the worst first date we’ve had.” 

It’s a terrible joke and it shouldn’t be funny but Bucky has to fold forward and tuck his chin to hide his inappropriate laughter. Under other circumstances, he might have been horrified by such a cavalier comment, but it’s not like the exposure could make their current situation  _ more _ dangerous. Besides, it’s weirdly hilarious to see the expressions of revulsion sweeping the room around them as he takes the opportunity to subtly scope their surroundings out; they’re on the ground floor of the silo, up close to the base of the missile and there are bits of machinery and tools scattered about haphazardly. There are roughly twenty-eight men in view, and Bucky can clearly differentiate two different groups - the majority of the men are heavily armed and wearing basic armor, while about ten of the men are dressed in white coveralls, are unarmed, and seem to be more interested in bustling around the missile than in Bucky and Tony.

Just as Bucky is straightening up as much as he can again, one of the guys in coveralls approaches the cluster of armed men around Tony. “Sir,” the man says, “we’re ready to move forward with the launch.”

The man he’s addressing is looming over Tony with a massive semi-automatic aimed at his head - Bucky knows a ringleader when he sees one. “Good. Start the sequence.” He turns to Tony, leering in a way that makes Bucky’s hackles rise and his arm start revving up again. “Looks like we won’t be needing you after all,” he sneers.

“Well, now I’m really insulted,” Tony complains wryly. “After everything we’ve been through together. Where did you even get this stuff? Bad guy Ikea probably; shitty quality and incomprehensible instruction manual. Sure, no problem, you just figured you’d kidnap a high profile billionaire genius who also happens to be a superhero, fuck around with him for a few days, and then pretend you figured it out on your own anyway. You know, you probably could have gotten an MIT grad student to do this if you just, like, offered them an internship. It would have been way easier.”

“Do you ever. Fucking. Shut up?” the Ringleader growls. Abruptly he adjusts his grip on the rifle he’s carrying and slams it down on Tony’s leg. It gets Tony to stop talking, but it does not shut him up; there’s an audible snap of bone and Tony screams, trying his best to curl up and clutch his now broken leg.

“Tony!” Bucky shouts, starting to lurch forward. But the goons are ready for him and hold him back, pummeling him with their boots and the butts of their own guns. Bucky doesn’t care - he hardly even notices - and he makes it to his feet twice. But the second time they force him back to his knees he’s able to see Tony around the legs of the goons surrounding him; Tony meets Bucky’s gaze, even though his own eyes are still filled with tears of pain, and he shakes his head just slightly. Tony’s sweating and breathing hard, still clutching his leg, but he looks focused, determined. So Bucky stops resisting and after a few more minutes the goons step back, leaving Bucky with significantly more bruises, but still on his knees.    


A moment of relative calm falls over them; the goons still look angry and restless, and the guys in coveralls are approaching a frenzy as they run around; they’re bustling with increasing purpose, typing at terminals and carrying bundles of massive hoses around, presumably preparing to launch the rocket. “What are you going to do with it?” Bucky asks before he can stop himself. He glances sideways at the rocket, eyeing it with a nauseous twist in his stomach.

The ringleader turns toward Bucky like Bucky has somehow insulted him just by daring to talk. “The missile will drop its payload over New York, and thus begins the cleanse.”

The curl of revulsion and disgust in the pit of Bucky’s stomach is automatic; he doesn’t need to ask what the guy means by that. Tony had called these guys neo-nazis earlier, but even without that, Bucky had heard plenty of bluster about the different kinds of “filth” cluttering up the streets of New York when he was a kid - the difference is, none of those small minded assholes back in the day had a giant missile to actually implement their crazy.

“Won’t the bomb just kill everyone?” Bucky asks. He doesn’t need to, doesn’t want to know any more about these guys and their ideologies, but stalling is the only idea he’s got right now.

“Some sacrifices may have to be made, for the good of all,” the man says haughtily. It’s disappointing, really, to realize that even in the future at least some parts of humanity never change. “Not that it matters to you; neither of you will live to see it, after all.” The man squats down next to Tony, grabbing him roughly by the hair and giving him a yank that makes Tony groan. “Not exactly a blaze of glory, but it looks like you’re finally getting to fulfill your death wish, huh  _ Iron Man _ .” The name doesn’t mean anything to Bucky but the way the man is smirking and leering makes it sound like an insult.

Tony bares his - bloody - teeth at the guy, his breath harsh but controlled pants. “Your shitty bomb won’t even make it off the ground,” he says. Bucky can feel the rage and coiled tension radiating off of him, but Tony’s just goading them, he isn’t fighting back. Part of Bucky wants to scream for him to  _ do something _ ! These guys are idiots; they didn’t even restraint Tony’s hands, and the dickhole looming over him is in a precariously balanced squat. Tony could easily knock him flat on his stupid ass by barely even moving. But Tony’s just laying there, staring up at the man, afraid but strangely calm and looking incongruously confident. It sends a shiver down Bucky’s spine - maybe the ringleader is right, maybe Tony does want to die, maybe whatever plan he’s got will end with all of them dead. It’s not like Bucky really knows… anything about Tony, after all.

“Sir, we’re ready,” one of the guys in coveralls declares.

“Then open the doors and fire it up!” The leader lets go of Tony, standing and practically vibrating with gleeful excitement. At his command one of the other goons pulls a lever and the massive, circular metal doors at the top of the silo start to roll back with loud clanking and groaning.

Bucky is out of patience. Tactically, he knows he should wait it out, wait for a better opening, but he’s exhausted and frustrated and it’s just  _ so easy _ to snap the flimsy cuffs holding his arms behind his back. The sound of the cuffs snapping is covered by the echoing metallic clanks of the slowly opening silo door, and he’s able to jump to his feet and snatch the gun out of the hands of the nearest goon while they’re all staring at him slack-jawed.

Unfortunately, the leader is quicker on the uptake than the others, and by the time Bucky manages to aim his stolen gun, the Ringleader has the barrel of his rifle pressed against Tony’s temple.

“Hold it right there, Rambo,” the leader growls. “I was planning to wait until after the launch, but it’s no skin off of my nose if he dies now.”

Bucky blows out a low snarl through his nostrils - even if he could out shoot the leader standing over Tony, there are too many other goons and there’s no way Bucky could beat all of them to Tony. He still feels better now that he’s on his feet and holding a gun, but there isn’t much he can actually do while Tony is so vulnerable and they’re so wildly out matched. 

Tony isn’t paying any attention to the gun held to his head. His eyes are on Bucky, and his expression is level; it takes Bucky a second to place it, but that’s  _ trust _ on Tony’s face, confidence  _ in Bucky _ . It’s somehow both gratifying and absolutely terrifying.

It’s a tense stand off, but it can’t last for long; above them the silo doors are halfway open and three of the men in coveralls are starting to load large cylinders into a compartment in the rocket. The leader still has his gun pointed at Tony’s head, but his eyes are on Bucky, watching him with a leer, almost like he  _ wants _ Bucky to try and make a move.

Bucky can’t move; he doesn’t  _ have _ a move to make. He’s frozen, paralyzed by uncertainty and the impossible odds they’re facing. He risks taking his eyes off of the leader to look at Tony instead, hoping desperately to convey with just a glance how sorry he is for not finding them a way out of this. But Tony isn’t looking at Bucky’s face; he’s staring at Bucky’s metal arm with a look of impatient anticipation. Then several things happen in rapid succession.

There’s a startling chime that comes from inside of Bucky’s metal arm; it immediately draws the attention of the goons clustered around him, inspiring a chorus of muttered “what the fucks?” and cocking of guns. With nearly all of the goons focused on Bucky, Tony abruptly lurches to his feet, just barely making it to the lever controlling the silo doors. The doors grind to a halt, drawing the attention of the goons back to Tony, who had apparently exhausted himself with the effort and collapses back to the floor.

Bucky starts shooting. He doesn’t think, barely even pauses to line up his shots. His only goals are to take out as many of the goons as possible and get to Tony. There’s a chorus of enraged shouting as the goons fumble into action. Some of them start to fire their own guns wildly while others attempt to grab Bucky or Tony. Bucky doesn’t have time to calculate their odds exactly, but they aren’t good.

Except there’s a loud roaring sound coming from above them. For a second Bucky thinks that someone had gotten past Tony and activated the silo doors again, but when he looks up the metal doors are still stationary. The sun is nearly directly above them, glinting and reflecting off of the metal of the rocket, but Bucky could swear he sees a humanoid figure descending down through the partially open silo doors. The roar gets louder, accompanied by a high pitched whine and then a burst of blue light that hits the goons closest to Tony and drives them back.

As the figure descends Bucky recognizes the blood streaked armor - the armor that is  _ flying _ and blasting bad guys with  _ light _ . The goons seem just as startled as Bucky is, and while some of them try to shoot the armor - uselessly, the bullets just ping off of the metal - most are scrambling to get away from the blasts being aimed at them.

Bucky finally makes it to Tony, who has just managed to drag himself to his feet, leaning heavily on the console connected to the door lever. “Thank fucking god,” Tony is muttering to himself. When the armor lands Tony actually tries to move  _ toward _ it, and Bucky instinctively tries to hold him back; whoever’s in there may be shooting at the bad guys for now, but that doesn’t mean they’re a friend. Except the armor lands on the concrete near them and the many panels that shape it shift, opening up to reveal… nothing. The armor is empty and hollow inside and Tony lurches toward it without hesitation. “JARVIS, about damn time, buddy,” Tony rambles, and Bucky watches with a stunned sense of both awe and discomfort as the armor closes around Tony, encasing his entire body in metal. The metal helmet has a large concave dent in it, so Tony discards it, leaving his head and face exposed, which shouldn’t be a relief except that it kind of is.

“Apologies for my delay, sir,” says a crisp British voice from somewhere around the armor’s shoulder.

“Not your fault. Blame these dickholes and their shockingly competent electromagnetic blocking field,” Tony dismisses. “Stabilize that leg as much as you can for me, will you? We have some shit to fuck up.”

Bucky doesn’t even realize that he’s still staring slack-jawed at Tony and the armor until Tony calls his name and waves in his direction. “Bucky, you with me? We’ve got work to do, come on. Just because JARVIS has been slacking doesn’t mean we can leave the rest of this mess to him.”

Bucky swallows, shaking himself, and nods. He looks around and finds that nearly all of the goons, both armed and in coveralls, are lying prone scattered around the room, though a couple seem to have retreated up into the scaffolding ringing the room. One manages to find a good position and fires down at them, but Tony shifts, putting himself bodily in front of Bucky so that the bullet hits the chestplate of the armor and drops uselessly to the floor. Tony then lifts his arm and fires another shot of that blue light up at the man, who cries out and falls off of the scaffolding.

Behind them, there’s a deafening roar and a wave of blistering heat as the rocket starts to fire up. Tony swears, turning his attention back to the terminal. “We need to shut this thing down!” he shouts over the sound of the engines.

“How?” Bucky shouts back. He takes a shot at another goon hiding in the scaffolding above them, covering Tony’s back while Tony types furiously on the screen in front of him.

Tony doesn’t answer right away, he’s plugged some kind of cord reaching from an elbow joint of the armor into the console and is apparently having a conversation with the British voice which is a mix of half finished sentences and words that Bucky does not understand. “Self destruct, yes, that’ll work. Jay, can you jam the launch protocols?”

“On it, sir,” the British voice replies.

“Bucky!” Tony calls, drawing Bucky’s attention away from the very annoying version of hide and go seek he’s been playing with the goons in the scaffolding. “You see that panel over there?” Tony gestures to the still open panel on the rocket where the men in coveralls had been installing tall cylinders filled with some sort of viscous looking liquid. “I need you to get in there and yank out every wire you can reach.” Bucky eyes the rocket, not liking leaving his current task of watching Tony’s back. “Now, come on! Do whatever it takes to disconnect those cylinders from… from fucking everything!” Tony insists without looking up. “Be sure to use the metal arm. And try not to actually break the cylinders.”

Bucky complies, keeping his gun in his flesh hand and one eye toward the scaffolding as he makes his way to the rocket. The closer to the rocket he gets the hotter it is, like the air itself is burning, but Bucky persists and reaches the panel. There isn’t time to assess the situation, so he does at Tony said and just shoves his metal arm into the hole, ripping and breaking everything he can reach. It takes effort. The muscles all the way down the left side of his back burn with the force he has to put into ripping out some of the pieces, and the skin of his shoulder which is pressed closest to the rocket is starting to burn even through the tactical vest.

Just when Bucky’s pretty sure he’s broken everything he can reach and has actually removed most of the cylinders - minding Tony’s warning not to break them and setting them carefully on the ground - Tony shouts, “Good enough, let’s go!” The roar of the engines in his suit are drown out by the sound of the silo doors moving again, except this time they’re rolling closed. “Grab on,” Tony orders, as he  _ flies _ over to Bucky and holds out his hand.

There’s about fifteen seconds where Bucky’s mind just… refuses. Another bullet whizzes past them and Tony jerks the arm he isn’t offering to Bucky out and blasts a hole in the main support of the scaffolding, causing half the structure to start collapsing to the ground. The rocket beside them just keeps getting hotter and there’s a shrieking-grinding sound coming from it that can’t be an noise it is supposed to take. And there is a man in a  _ flying suit of armor _ hovering in front of Bucky, telling him to climb aboard.

The thing is, Bucky trusts this man… possibly more than he’s ever trusted anyone or anything else in his entire life - except Steve.

Bucky grabs the armor’s metal gauntlet and he’s pulled in close, both arms wrapping tight around him as the boots flare blue and they’re airborne. Tony isn’t even looking where they’re going, grinning at Bucky with a sort of manic glee as they swoop upward. Beneath them, an explosion rocks the entire building, nearly knocking them off course, but somehow the armor manages to stay true and they shoot through the narrow gap in the silo doors. Bucky can just feel the edge of the metal door scraping against his back as they rocket through and he looks down to see just a boiling pit of flame in the silo below before the doors grind all the way closed.

Bucky can’t breathe. He’s overwhelmed. He can’t process what’s happening except that he’s fucking  _ flying _ with nothing to hold him up but a pair of metal encased arms. It’s not a smooth flight, but Tony is still grinning, looking elated and utterly unconcerned as the ground recedes beneath them. They fly away from the compound, which is collapsing inward in a series of earthshaking explosions. Bucky is dizzy as they fly over the open field and the road leading to the compound. The wind is too sharp, blowing in his eyes and he convinces himself that that’s why they’re tearing up, why he has to close them and bury his face against the smooth metal encasing Tony’s shoulder.

Then they’re landing, and it’s a bit more of a crash than a touchdown. Tony stumbles and they both land prone in soft grass, rolling a few times before coming to a winded, dizzying halt. Bucky lays where he landed for several minutes, just staring up at the sky as the smoke cloud from the compound floats at the edge of his vision. But then Tony is hovering over him, bloody and exhausted but still grinning, the suit of armor still whirring softly.

“Bucky?” Tony asks.

“So what was our worst first date?” Bucky asks numbly, blinking hard up at the clouds of smoke in the sky. 

Tony laughs. He laughs so long and hard that he has to drop back down onto his back in the grass beside Bucky and stare up at the sky too.

“Sir,” the British voice interrupts, “the Avengers are roughly three minutes out from your current location.”

“Super,” Tony mutters. “They get to handle clean up.” Tony turns his head to the side, and Bucky instinctively does the same so that they can look at each other. “Are you okay?” Tony asks.

Bucky blinks at him. His arm moves, seemingly of its own volition, and brushes a strand of hair back from Tony’s sweat-and-blood streaked face. “No, definitely not,” he admits. “Are you?”

“I wouldn’t be, without you,” Tony says, and he’s absolutely serious, the tone shift jarring as he stares a little too hard into Bucky’s eyes.

Bucky swallows, feeling weirdly shy both at Tony’s words and his scrutiny. He can’t think of anything to say in response, so he just leans in and kisses Tony. It’s awkward, with the bulk of the armor between them, both too tired to sit up or move to a better angle, and they could both seriously use a toothbrush. But it doesn’t matter. Bucky clutches Tony as best as he can through the armor and Tony is holding on to Bucky just as tight.

And all Bucky can think is,  _ I did it. He’s safe. _

Beautiful art by River ([tumblr / ](https://riverlander974.tumblr.com)[AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riverlander974)) Check out the original art post [here](https://riverlander974.tumblr.com/post/166427625352/nothing-in-the-sky-above-me-nothing-strung-below)!


	8. Chapter 7

Steve doesn’t bother waiting until the quinjet has fully touched the ground before he jumps out. 

He’s exhausted, covered in soot and blood. He’s spent the past… fuck, he doesn’t even know how long either trapped in the quinjet with nothing productive to do, or in Siberia stuck in a fight with bad guys - who were  _ bad guys _ and did  _ need _ to be fought, but were not directly the bad guys responsible for kidnapping Tony and did not  _ have _ Tony in Siberia for Steve to rescue, which is what was supposed to happen. But he doesn’t care about any of that right at this moment, he can’t care about any of that right at this moment, because only thirty feet in front of him Tony and Bucky are alive and whole and dragging themselves to their feet to greet him.

He barrels straight into Tony without stopping. It’s frustrating that Tony is encased in the suit and Steve can’t actually get to his skin, but for now it will do to just wrap his arms around Tony’s living, breathing body and bury his face in Tony’s neck, smelling three days worth of blood and sweat, but not caring because he can feel the pounding of Tony’s pulse against his face. 

Tony tolerates it, hugging him back and murmuring meaningless reassurances to match Steve’s incoherent swearing and rambles of relief, for several minutes. He presses kisses into Steve’s hair and digs his gauntleted fingers into the back of Steve’s suit and even through the armor Steve can feel him shaking. But eventually Tony pulls away, gently pushing Steve back enough to look at him properly.

“Tell me the truth, are you okay?” Steve asks, cupping Tony’s face in both hands and staring him dead in the eye.

Tony grimaces, but he retracts the gauntlets so that he can reach up and grip Steve’s wrists with his bare hands. “No, I am super not okay right now,” he answers, with surprisingly obedient honesty. “But I will be,” he adds, his voice low, sincere promise.

Steve takes a shaky breath and nods, accepting that as good enough for now. Then he turns to Bucky, who is standing just behind Tony, shifting from foot to foot and looking strangely shy. When Tony steps aside Steve lurches forward to hug Bucky just as tightly. Bucky grunts, but Steve can feel the tension starting to drain out of Bucky’s body and it’s just as much of a relief to cling to him for several long minutes as it had been to hold onto Tony.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Bucky demands, holding Steve out at arm’s length and glaring at him. “You look like shit.”

Steve lets out a hoarse laugh and shakes his head. “I could say the same thing to you,” he retorts. “I told you to stay in New York where it’s safe.”

Bucky blinks, a confused frown flitting over his face. “You did?” he asks, but shakes it off. “And you really expected that to work?”

Steve’s mouth goes dry and he can’t help glancing at Tony, whose grim silence tells him everything he needs to know. It had been horrifying to arrive in Siberia, fight his way through an entire underground base, and find that Tony wasn’t there. It had been terrifying to realize they’d lost contact with JARVIS, and even worse when they finally fixed the connection only to be told that Bucky had gone after Tony alone. JARVIS admitting that he’d lost contact with Bucky too, that had been almost too much to bear. But this- “Your memory-” he starts, unable to even finish that sentence, looking back and forth between Bucky and Tony like if he looks away from either one of them for too long they’ll disappear.

“We handled it,” Tony says, gentle and reassuring - which really serves to drive home exactly how exhausted and  _ not okay _ Tony is right now. “Well, Bucky did a lot of handling it. He found me, and he helped me get out. Helped me stop those assholes from dropping a chemical bomb on New York while we were at it too. And, by the way,” Tony adds, craning his neck to look around Steve toward where the rest of the team are undoubtedly watching, “you guys get to handle the clean up because I need a shower and to sleep for a week.”

“You need a doctor,” Bucky interjects pointedly.

“Yeah, okay, probably that too,” Tony admits reluctantly. 

Steve doesn’t want to let either one of them out of his sight - or, frankly, out of touching range - but there is a massive smoking crater on the other side of the hill they’re standing on and somebody does need to deal with that. Sam and Bruce take Tony and Bucky in hand, coaxing them back to the quinjet to be checked over and patched up while Natasha, Clint, and Thor start investigating the rubble.

It doesn’t look like there’s much to do; this base appears to have been mostly underground, the same as the one in Siberia, and it’s collapsed into itself thanks to the destruction wrought on it by Tony and Bucky. Thor does a fly over and sees no sign of any survivors trying to escape. Tony warns them about the gas, but thankfully Bucky had managed to disconnect it from the bomb itself and prevent it from disseminating too far, mostly trapped within the sealed off underground tunnels as they collapsed. The fire is even starting to die down to a smoulder. It doesn’t take Natasha long to pointedly shoo Steve back to the quinjet, insisting that she, Clint, and Thor had the situation handled. Steve isn’t hard to convince.

Bucky is sitting on the ramp into the quinjet, looking edgy and uncomfortable but letting Sam check him over without too much resistance. Steve squeezes Bucky’s shoulder reassuringly as he passes him, heading deeper into the quinjet where Bruce has coaxed Tony out of the suit and is clucking over his apparently broken leg. 

“Would you hold him up so I can tape his ribs, at least?” Bruce asks Steve, gesturing toward Tony and already sounding exasperated.

Steve is all too happy to sit down on the bench next to Tony and support him. He tries not to look too closely at the mess of bruises, scrapes, and burn marks coloring his chest. But Tony sighs and leans back against Steve, fumbling for Steve’s hand as Steve takes almost all of Tony’s weight. Steve squeezes Tony’s hand, kissing the top of his head. “Are you up for telling me what happened now, or do you want to wait?” he asks, wanting to give Tony something else to focus on almost as much as he wants to know the story.

“I’m missing some pretty big chunks of it myself,” Tony admits, hissing softly when Bruce prods his ribs a little too hard. “Those goons wanted me to fix their shitty tech, which of course I refused, and they insisted. It was boring and cliche and we were chasing each other in circles for - what was it, three days?”

“More or less,” Steve confirms, trying to ignore the sickening twist in the pit of his stomach. He has to look away, staring up toward the cockpit of the quinjet and blinking hard so that his brain won’t connect those three “boring and cliche” days with the horrifying spread of injuries decorating Tony’s body. They’re mostly minor injuries, which is overwhelmingly lucky, but Steve can’t help imagining what could have happened.

“Right. Well. They were stupid and incompetent, and I was in the middle of escaping to fuck up their shit when Bucky just… showed up.” Tony shrugs. His face isn’t portraying much emotion besides exhaustion and pain, but Steve knows him well enough to read the undercurrent in his voice hinting at the things he’s not saying. 

“How did he get there? How did he even know where you were?” Steve asks. He glances toward Bucky, who is now engrossed in sniping back and forth with Sam - no matter how many times Bucky meets Sam, somethings are pretty much always consistent.

“Toward that, I believe I can provide some answers,” JARVIS says. It’s unsettling to watch the headless armor move and hear JARVIS’ voice coming out of the speakers set into the shoulders, but it’s not like Steve hasn’t seen weirder.

“Please do,” Tony says, huffing softly and sagging back more fully against Steve as soon as Bruce has finished taping his ribs. 

“Sometime after the team’s departure from the Tower, Sergeant Barnes decided to review the available intel and determined that it was more likely Sir was brought here, to this compound,” JARVIS reports. Behind the neutral that JARVIS’ voice always is on the surface, Steve knows him well enough to hear the way that he is purposefully selecting each word before he says it. “When I realized that, despite my best efforts, I could not contact any of you-” JARVIS pauses, and it’s hard to tell without even the face-like helmet of the suit to focus on, but Steve is pretty sure that there is a sort of chagrin in JARVIS’ voice. “Sir’s chances of survival were rapidly declining. Sergeant Barnes and I decided that, even if we could contact you, we could not afford to wait for you to arrive here. My intention was to assist him, to survey the situation and act only if necessary to protect Sir until the Avengers could arrive.”

“That didn’t work out so well, did it?” Tony prods.

“Very few of our plans do,” Bruce points out wryly.

“Let me guess, you hit that stupid EMP field they had up,” Tony says. “That thing was a real bitch. I still don’t understand how those idiots got it to work when nothing else did.”

“I was cut off from both Sergeant Barnes and the suit. It was abrupt and quite jarring,” JARVIS confirms. “Based on the damage done to the armor, I can conjecture that the armor crashed rather dramatically, and remained inoperative until I was able to reestablish contact with it and come to your aid.”

Steve swallows hard. “So Bucky probably lost consciousness in the crash. That’s probably when- fuck.” Steve has to take several deep, careful breaths against the irrational, retroactive fear brewing nausea in his stomach. “He woke up alone. Not knowing where he was-”

“But he still came to find me,” Tony says. He squeezes Steve’s hand pointedly, grounding him and pulling him out of his downward spiral of helpless panic. But it isn’t just for Steve’s sake, because there’s a sort of disbelieving wonder in Tony’s voice too. “Steve, he didn’t know my name, but he knew  _ me _ . The first thing he did when we - literally - ran into each other was kiss me. Well-” he amends, half shrugging, “technically first he almost shot me, but he hadn’t seen my face yet so that doesn’t count. The point is, he kissed me. Without knowing my name, without talking to me. He just… did it. He knew me, and he trusted me, and he-” Tony trails off, his eyes too bright and blinking rapidly. 

Steve doesn’t push him, just presses a kiss to Tony’s temple because he  _ gets it _ , and also because there are other emotions still brewing inside of Steve and he isn’t yet quite to the point of acceptance and relief that Tony is finding. “I should have been here,” Steve says, the words bitter and acrid in his mouth.

“Steve, please, I am too tired to deal with that shit right now,” Bucky interrupts with a huff. He drops down onto the bench on Steve’s free side, and the tone of his words are softened by the way he tucks himself up against Steve’s side and rests his head on Steve’s shoulder. “I’m not gonna lie, that whole situation, that was a lot. It was stressful, and confusing. But it’s over, and we’re all here, and it’s fine now.”

“One question,” Tony pipes up, half craning around Steve to look at Bucky. “How did you know to look for me? I mean, you  _ were _ looking for me specifically, weren’t you?”

“Yeah.” Bucky grunts, shifting enough to dig around inside his tactical vest. He grimaces and pulls out a - now very battered and dirty - sketchbook. He hands it over and Steve takes it, flipping through the familiar pages until he finds the last one; he doesn’t have to look at the half finished sketch of Tony on the right page, but his eyes are drawn to the two shaky, smeared words on the left.

“Is that blood?” Sam asks, leaning in to get a peek too and looking somewhere between appropriately disgusted and resigned incredulity. 

Bucky shrugs. “I woke up with a bunch of weapons, that, uh, thing-” he fumbles, gesturing toward the suit, “and that book. Kind just made up the rest as I went.”

Bruce whistles softly and shakes his head, Sam throws his arms in the air and walks off - presumably to check in with Natasha and Clint - and Steve exchanges a look with Tony.

“You are amazing, and I love you, and we definitely super need to talk about this a lot more,” Tony says, but he has to pause to yawn wide enough that it makes his jaw crack. “But I think I need a nap first.”

“You need more than a nap,” Steve grumbles, but he accepts the blanket that Bruce offers him and tucks it carefully around Tony. “When we get back to the Tower I’m not letting you out of bed for like, three weeks.”

“Deal,” Tony mumbles, his eyes already falling closed.

Steve fusses a bit, making sure that Tony is secure in his seat with the blanket tucked firmly around him. When he’s sure Tony is safe and deeply asleep, he turns back to Bucky, who is looking awkward and uncertain as he eyes Steve.

“Are we- uh-” Bucky starts and stops a few times.

Steve smiles, small and tired but only a little bit forced and leans in to rest his forehead against Bucky’s. “I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry that you had to do that. You should have never been left alone like that,” he says quietly, maintaining eye contact with Bucky despite how close together their faces are. “But I am so incredibly proud of you.”

Bucky smiles back, small and crooked, and leans in the last couple of inches to kiss Steve; they’re both too tired for it to be anything but light and chaste, but it’s nice anyway. “You’re such a sap, Rogers,” Bucky teases when he pulls back.

“Shut up and get some sleep,” Steve mutters, cuffing Bucky playfully on the shoulder and handing him a second blanket. “We’ll talk more when we get home.”

“Please tell me we have a giant, incredibly comfortable bed at this Tower you all keep talking about,” Bucky says.

Steve laughs, smoothing Bucky’s hair back from his face, unable to resist fussing a little. “It’s the best bed in the world,” he promises. “And, yes, you will be keeping Tony company in it for a while when we get back.”

“You gonna enforce that?” Bucky looks sleepy and vulnerable, but calm as he hugs the blanket around himself and settles in.

“You bet your ass I am,” Steve promises.

Bucky smiles as he falls asleep. Steve checks them both over once more, telling himself that it’s practical to make sure they’re belted in securely, and warm enough, and only letting his touches linger a little to reassure himself that they’re safe and breathing.

Then Steve collapses. He ends up on the floor in between Tony and Bucky’s legs. He tilts sideways as the exhaustion and relief hit him in an abrupt, overwhelming rush, and ends up resting against Bucky’s leg while he stretches out a hand to hook it around Tony’s ankle, needing to keep contact with both of them.

_ They’re safe. They’re fine. Everything’s okay _ , he tells himself over and over as he finally comes down from the prolonged adrenaline of fear and stress.

He doesn’t even realize that he’s half dozed off himself until he jerks up at the touch of Sam’s hand on his shoulder. Sam doesn’t say anything, looking deeply worn out himself - it’s been a hell of a week for all of them - but he holds a third blanket out to Steve and Steve takes it with a wordless nod of thanks. 

Clint and Natasha are trooping back onto the quinjet, and distantly he hears Thor assuring them that he’ll keep an eye on the compound and meet them back in New York later. Clint shoots Steve a tired, joking salute as he passes on his way to the cockpit, and Natasha settles herself in the seat across from them to stare pointedly, watchfully, everything about her posture proclaiming  _ guard duty _ . Steve leaves her to it, content to listen to the soft, even breaths of Tony and Bucky and feel the warmth of their skin against him, while the quinjet rumbles to life beneath him.

“Homeward bound,” Clint calls, and Steve closes his eyes, finally letting himself relax as the quinjet lifts into the sky.


	9. Epilogue

*****

Epilogue

*****

The sensation of waking up alone is familiar to Bucky. It’s not a bad thing, Bucky tends to sleep in, while both of his boyfriends are earlier risers - or, just, not-sleepers, in Tony’s case. At least, Bucky thinks so. But Tony is supposedly confined to bed rest after some sort of incident a few weeks ago. Bucky doesn’t remember the incident, and when he asks about it everyone gets uncomfortable and shifty eyed; it’s not that they’re hiding it from him, they’ve given him an overview of what happened, but Bucky gets the sense that no one  _ wants _ to talk about it. And since it’s over now, in the past, Bucky doesn’t see much point in pushing the issue too hard.

He hasn’t seen much of Steve in the past couple of days; apparently the bad guys responsible for The Incident were being funding by some kind of conglomeration of even worse bad guys, and Steve’s pretty focused on trying to track the rest of them down. But Bucky has had plenty of time to get to know Tony - again. With Tony (semi)confined to bed while his injuries heal, Bucky’s been all too happy to keep him company.

Except this morning, Bucky wakes up and Tony isn’t in bed. He isn’t anywhere in the massive penthouse apartment - seriously, it’s ridiculous, how did he and Steve manage to start living with a man who Bucky can only assume has more money that god? Luckily, Tony is not only ridiculously rich, but he’s also some kind of future  _ genius _ because he has a butler who runs the entire building they live in, and is a  _ robot _ \- although when Bucky called him that Tony had argued, saying that JARVIS isn’t technically a robot because he doesn’t have a body, but then JARVIS had opened a door for Bucky and turned on the shower and Bucky won the argument by making an expansive gesture toward the entire building.

So JARVIS is able to tell Bucky that both Steve and Tony are down in Tony’s lab. Bucky’s only seen Tony’s lab in videos; it’s only a couple of floors down from the penthouse but with Tony supposedly confined to bed there’d been no reason to go down there. Thankfully, JARVIS is  _ the coolest _ , and with his help it’s easy enough to find his way down there.

“I thought bed rest meant he was actually supposed to stay in bed,” Bucky complains as JARVIS opens the sliding glass doors into the lab for him.

“Steve gave me time off for good behavior,” Tony answers without even looking up from whatever he’s doing. He’s wearing a button down silk pajama top which probably cost more than Bucky could earn in a year back in the day, but it’s smeared with oil stains and dotted with small burn holes; Tony does not seem to care. He also doesn’t seem to care about how much the boxers he’s wearing leave his legs exposed - he’d apparently gotten very fed up very quickly with trying to pull pants on over the massive bulk of the cast encasing his leg and declared himself anti-pants for the time being. He’s perched on a rolling chair, twisted at an awkward angle so that he can rest his broken leg up on a stool but still reach the low lab bench he’s sitting in front of. Steve is looming over Tony’s shoulder, half bent over him and holding something on the bench in front of them.

“By which he means he’s been sneaking down here all week anyway and I finally gave up on trying to stop him,” Steve clarifies. He glances up long enough to give Bucky a warm smile.

They look so comfortable together. In Bucky’s - admittedly limited experience, as far as his memory goes - Tony does not tolerate being fussed over well, but he’s practically leaning back into the circle created by Steve’s arms and he only huffs distractedly when Steve presses a kiss to the top of his head. It makes something twist in the pit of Bucky’s stomach, something almost bittersweet to see the ease, the familiarity they have with each other.

“You sleep okay?” Steve asks, drawing Bucky’s attention back to the moment at hand.

Bucky nods. He edges a little further into the room, feeling weirdly shy and awkward, like he’s encroaching on something private, like he shouldn’t be here.

“About time you woke up, anyway,” Tony says. Something in his hand sets off a flash of sparks, causing Steve to swear and abruptly pull Tony back from the bench until the sparks die down again. “It’s fine, it’s fine. That was on purpose,” Tony says, trying to wave Steve off with half hearted irritability. “Get over here, Barnes, I need your arm.”

“Uh, okay,” Bucky says, still feeling strangely unsteady but better now that he’s technically been invited in. He weaves his way slowly over to them, though he’s intercepted on the way by a robot that comes whizzing over to chirp at him - the thing is taller than he is and basically a giant claw on wheels and Bucky thinks he should probably be slightly alarmed by the way it barrels toward him. He isn’t alarmed though, instead he finds himself grinning and pausing long enough to pat the claw like some kind of bizarre dog. 

“Dummy, leave him alone,” Tony chides.

Bucky gives the robot one more awkward little pat before pushing past it to reach the bench where Tony and Steve are waiting. “What are you doing?” he asks, craning his neck to try and see what Tony is working on around Tony’s shoulder.

“The thing I do best,” Tony answers distractedly. “Give me your arm.”

Bucky holds out his metal arm without question. He doesn’t startle when Tony opens a small panel near the wrist of the arm - yesterday Bucky had given in to Tony’s bored raving and let Tony ‘tune up’ the metal arm. It had been deeply unsettling to see inside of the arm at first, but Tony had explained how it works to him and now he just finds it sort of fascinating. Tony twists to face Bucky better, the tip of his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth in deep concentration as he rearranges some of the mechanisms in the arm and then attaches a small metal cylinder. 

“There we go,” Tony declares with a grin, pushing the panel closed again and finally looking up at Bucky. “Give that a minute to sync and then we can fire this baby up.”

Bucky blinks. “... You aren’t going to light my arm on fire, are you?” he asks, though he isn’t really all that worried.

Tony huffs and glowers. “It’s an expression.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow, but he can’t help smirking a little at Tony irritation. Except when he looks up, whatever peace and synchronicity Steve had been feeling with Tony, it’s gone now in favor of anxious uncertainty. “Steve?” Bucky asks. Despite the fact that Tony is the only one visibly injured from The Incident, Bucky isn’t stupid enough to think that Steve is in any way unaffected by whatever happened.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Steve lies, shaking his head and swallowing hard. “It’s just, there’s some stuff we need to talk about.”

“That’s reassuring,” Bucky says wryly. 

“This might take a while,” Tony warns. “Pull up a seat.” He gestures to another stool set in front of the next bench over and Bucky gamely drags it over and straddles it, watching both Steve and Tony with wary curiosity.

“A couple of weeks ago, I… messed up, in a lot of ways,” Steve says slowly, not quite meeting Bucky’s eyes.

“Wow, starting right off with the self-flagellation, how am I not surprised,” Tony mutters, but it’s fond and teasing. “Look, a lot of not great shit went down. Maybe some of it could have been prevented if we were better prepared, maybe not. But it worked out in the end.”

“We got lucky,” Steve insists.

“Only like 20% lucky,” Tony argues. “The other 80% was Bucky being his hot, badass self.” It sounds like a joke, except there’s sincerity in Tony’s voice and Bucky catches himself blushing a little.

“Well, that’s good to know, I guess,” he says, glancing from Tony to Steve and back again.

“The point is,” Steve cuts in with stubborn persistence, “you were in danger, and alone. And just because you don’t remember it now doesn’t make that okay. You should have never been put in that position to begin with.” Steve takes a breath, deep enough to make his shoulders flex. “But,” he adds carefully, “it’s important to us that you have… options. We’ve been making this work for a year now, but what happened a few weeks ago exposed a lot of weaknesses in our system.”

“Our system which mostly amounted to JARVIS handling pretty much everything,” Tony says, “which, in fairness, JARVIS is good at that, a lot of our systems rely on JARVIS, he was pretty much designed for that sort of thing. But anyway, point is, we need contingencies. Portable ones.”

Bucky isn’t entirely sure how to respond to any of this. There’s guilt written all over Steve’s face, and Tony is wearing a sort of mulish expression that Bucky thinks is actually covering anger - presumably at the guys who caused The Incident. “I appreciate the concern,” Bucky says slowly, his tone almost making it a question, “and I get that this is important to you. But, I mean, I’m fine? I feel fine. The past couple of days have been pretty great. I don’t really have anything to complain about.” 

“But, here’s the thing,” Tony says, picking up the small object he’s been working on with a flourish, “why settle for fine, when you can have  _ better _ !”

And the object in the palm of Tony’s hand… moves. At first glance, it looks like a lizard. It’s definitely shaped like a lizard, about a foot long from nose to tail-tip, except that its silver and metallic. It shifts again in Tony’s hand, little head tilting up as though it’s looking at Bucky - its eyes are large and a glittering black.

“What… the hell is that?” Bucky asks, unable to stop staring at the lizard.

“Well, it’s sort of a prototype,” Tony says, sounding almost defensive. “And it’s an AI, so, you know, the more time you spend with it the more it’ll learn and the better it’ll function.”

“An AI?” Bucky repeats. He’s heard the term before - it’s what Tony had called JARVIS - but this little lizard definitely isn’t JARVIS and Bucky isn’t actually sure what the term means.

“Artificial intelligence,” Steve explains. He’s resting a hand on Tony’s shoulder and looking down at the lizard too, and he’s got that sappy expression on his face that means Bucky should probably be very impressed. “It’s a robot, but it can think for itself.”

“Which means it can’t get lost,” Tony adds. “That thing I just put in your arm is basically a homing beacon. It’s not a tracker, no one but this little guy should be able to pick up the signal. But it means it can find you if you get separated. It can also store memory videos for you, and you can tell it to remind you of things. So if you’re ever cut off from the rest of us again, the robot can fill you in and everything.”

“You’ll never have to wake up alone again,” Steve adds, looking relieved and satisfied.

“Plus,” Tony adds, “you know, it’s cute. I mean, I can totally change its shape, make it different. Bigger, smaller, whatever you want. But Steve said you’ve always really liked reptiles, but he also said that making it T-Rex shaped would probably be too big, so-”

Bucky lets Tony’s ramble wash over him, but the lizard is openly staring at him now and it’s sort of mesmerizing. Slowly, Bucky holds out his hand and the lizard twitches its tail, then scampers onto the palm of Bucky’s hand. It stands up on its hind legs as Bucky lifts his hand to look at it more closely. “Uh, hello there,” Bucky says, feeling a little stupid, but Tony talks to his robots all the time, so he figures it’s not really that weird. 

The lizard chirps at him, blinking its big reflective eyes. Then it spreads its little arms out and out pop a pair of glider-like wings that triple the width of its body. The metal of it’s belly shifts into a reflective black that matches its eyes and the wings, and then it changes again to show a photograph of Bucky himself, hugged on either side by Steve and Tony who appear to both be trying to kiss him at once while they all laugh.

Bucky just stares. “Fuck,” he whispers. “That’s amazing.” 

The picture disappears, the metal turning silver again and wings retracting. Then the lizard drops back down onto all fours and scampers up Bucky’s arm to start crawling around in his hair - it feels fucking bizarre, seriously, the thing has  _ claws _ because apparently Tony is overwhelmingly detail-oriented. But it’s also kind of nice, and Bucky can’t help a little chuckle as the lizard wiggles its way under the collar of his shirt.

“So, you like it?” Tony asks, somehow managing to make the question sound both rhetorical and heartbreakingly sincere.

“I’m still a little fuzzy on why you think this is necessary,” Bucky admits, carefully extracting the lizard from his shirt and cupping it in the palm of his hand again. “But you literally built me a pet robot, of course I love it!”

“Told you so,” Steve says, leaning down to kiss Tony’s temple. “So, what are you going to name it?”

“Sparky,” Tony says.

“No, absolutely not,” Steve says. “It’s Bucky’s to name, and you do not have a history of making good naming choices for your robots.”

Bucky considers the lizard, who tilts its head to consider him back. “What do you think, ace?” he asks, meaning it as a joke, but the lizard’s whole body wiggles and it lets out a loud squeaking sound that Bucky could swear sounds delighted. “Ace?” he repeats, and the lizard makes the noise again before digging its way under the cuff of Bucky’s sleeve and climbing up his arm to drape itself around his neck.

“Ace it is, apparently,” Tony says. He’s grinning, and Steve isn’t looking tense and guilty any more.

Bucky leans in and presses a soft kiss to Tony’s lips. “Thank you,” he says. “I love you.” The words flow so easily, so smoothly off of his tongue, but Tony’s cheeks turn pink and he tries to duck away to start fiddling with the tools scattered across the workbench.

“Not a chance,” Steve says, snagging a very small screwdriver out of Tony’s hand. “We agreed that you could finish Bucky’s robot, but now it’s back to bed.”

“Nooo,” Tony complains, drawing out the ‘o’, “I’ve had enough of bed. Bed is boring. I am an adult, with very busy adult things to do.” He pouts petulantly, but he doesn’t actually fight it when Steve pulls him to his feet.

“Come on,” Steve insists. He isn’t quite throwing Tony over his shoulder to carry him upstairs, but he is basically carrying Tony. “If you behave and eat some breakfast, I’ll build you a pillow fort and we can all start teaching Ace some tricks. Come on, Buck. Group breakfast in bed time.”

“Like I’m gonna argue with that.” Bucky grins, chasing after them eagerly. He catches himself petting the lizard’s head absently during the elevator ride back up to the penthouse, and the lizard presses into his fingers happily.

Steve all but dumps Tony into the massive puffy bed and then disappears into the kitchen to produce the promised breakfast, but Bucky elects to stay in the bedroom. He helps Tony get settled in the center of the bed, stacking up some pillows for him to rest his leg on.

“So you really like it?” Tony asks, reaching out to poke the lizard’s nose when Bucky settles on the bed beside him.

“I really, super do,” Bucky confirms. The lizard chitters scoldingly at Tony, squirming away from his touch and diving back under the collar of Bucky’s shirt, making Tony huff and Bucky laugh. But Bucky reaches up and catches Tony’s hand instead, pressing a kiss to his knuckles. “Honestly, I kind of can’t believe how lucky I am,” he admits seriously.

“Well, that makes at least two of us,” Tony agrees. “You saved my life, you know,” he adds after a pause, not quite meeting Bucky’s eyes. “You didn’t even remember who I was, but you came looking for me and you saved my life.”

Bucky has to swallow hard at the way his heart twists in his chest; there are so many implications in that, so many possibilities that he doesn’t want to think about. “I’d do it again,” Bucky says with absolute certainty; he may not know the details of The Incident, but if whatever went down involved him helping to make sure that Tony could be here, right now, in this bed with him, he has no doubt that he would do it all again in a heartbeat.

“Hopefully, you never have to,” Tony says. “But I appreciate the sentiment.” He pulls Bucky closer and kisses him until they’re both breathless.

It feels like home.

Adorable depiction of Ace done by [Eriot](http://latelierderiot.tumblr.com) You can see the original art post [here](http://latelierderiot.tumblr.com/post/166427698562/this-is-the-second-bang-i-signed-for-go-read-it)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end! I just wanted to thank my artists [River](https://riverlander974.tumblr.com/) and [Eriot](http://latelierderiot.tumblr.com/) again for such beautiful amazing work. And thanks again to the WinterIron Big Bang mods for making this such a great experience!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Art for] Nothing In The Sky Above Me (Nothing Strung Below Us, Baby, If We Fall)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12371280) by [Riverlander974](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riverlander974/pseuds/Riverlander974)




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